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Columbia University 
STUDIES IN ENGLISH AND COMPARATIVE 
LITERATURE 


THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN 
LITERATURE 


COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
NEw YORK 


SALES AGENTS 
LONDON 


HUMPHREY MILFORD 
AMEN CORNER, E. C. 


SHANGHAI 
EDWARD EVANS & SONS, LTp. 
30 NorTH SZECHUEN ROAD 





THE ARTISAN 


IN 


ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


BY 


CHARLES W. CAMP, PH. D. 


INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH IN WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY 





Nef York 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
1924 


All rights reserved 


COPYRIGHT, 1924 
BY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 





Printed from type. Published, March, 1924. 


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J. G. WHITTIER’s The Shoemakers 


Ho! workers of the old time styled 
The Gentle Craft of Leather! 
Young brothers of the ancient guild, 
Stand forth once more together! 
Call out again your long array, 
In the olden merry manner! 
Once more, on gay St. Crispin’s day, 
Fling out your blazoned banner! 


Rap, rap! upon the well-worn stone 
How falls the polished hammer! 

Rap, rap! the measured sound has grown 
A quick and merry clamor. 

Now shape the sole! now deftly curl 
The glossy vamp around it, 

And bless the while the bright-eyed girl 
Whose gentle fingers bound it! 


eeoreeee ee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eens 


The foremost still, by day or night, 
On moated mound or heather 

Where’er the need of trampled right 
Brought toiling men together; 

Where the free burghers from the wall 
Defied the mail-clad master, 

Than yours, at Freedom’s trumpet-call, 
No craftsmen rallied faster. 


eee eeeereeeer eee seers eeeereeere eee eee eee eeeee 


The red brick to the mason’s hand, 

The brown earth to the tiller’s, 
' The shoe in yours shall wealth command, 

Like fairy Cinderella’s! 

As they who shunned the household maid 
Beheld the crown upon her, 

So all shall see your toil repaid 
With hearth and home and honor. 


Then let the toast be freely quaffed, 
In water cool and brimming, 
‘All honor to the good old Craft, 
Its merry men and women!” 
Call out again your long array, 
In the old time’s pleasant manner: 
Once more, on gay St. Crispin’s day, 
Fling out his blazoned banner! 


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PREFACE 


Though the subject of the merchant and craft guilds 
is a favorite one among historical writers, it has not 
attracted students of literature. However frequently 
the artisan appears in the poems and plays of the 
Middle Ages and Elizabethan period, he has not as 
yet been the subject of study as a literary figure. 
Shakespeare’s England, 1916, 2 volumes, though care- 
ful in its treatment of the literature and history of the 
period, has almost nothing to say on this subject. The 
author, therefore, has made a study of the artisan 
and his family at work and at play as they appear in 
English literature during the period, approximately, 
1557 to 1642. Consideration is also given to the devel- 
opment of the treatment of artisans, simple and direct 
in the early period of Elizabeth’s reign and imitative 
and sophisticated in the reigns of James I and Charles I. 

This volume does not contain all that the writer 
has to say on the subject of craftsmen in literature. 
Further discussion of the subject will soon be ready 
for publication. 

The author is under obligation for stimulus and 
guidance to Professors A. H. Thorndike, H. M. Ayres, 
and W. W. Lawrence, all of Columbia University; and 
for certain suggestions to Professor J. H. Cox of West 
Virginia University. 


CHARLES W. CAMP. 


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CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 
SE MLLIREDR CUE ORGR EE Lila erat Set Alte eC erp eee Saya Ne. Peon aRN 
I. THe CRAFTSMAN AS A HEROIC FIGURE. ....... 18 
II. THE ARTISAN AS SPECULATOR AND PHILANTHROPIST. . 24 
Prime eORAPTSMAN AND) HIS) WORK) (js. 0 AT 
EV) SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN ....0.0. 06... 99 


IPIE CREAR MANY tLe he) a hye ee es DS Pa 





THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN 
LITERATURE 


INTRODUCTION 


Attention in this essay is devoted to individuals and 
types rather than to organizations. For a complete 
understanding of the craftsman or craftswoman, how- 
ever, brief mention must be made of the medieval and 
Renaissance guilds. 

As may be seen from the bibliography, much has 
been written on the history of guilds. A few words, 
therefore, are all that need be said here of the craft 
guilds. Originating from the beginning of the 11th to 
the middle of the 13th century, the craft guilds at- 
tained their greatest power in the 14th and 15th 
centuries. Formed for self-defense against barons, 
they protected themselves not only by co-operation, but 
also by self-criticism, since defective workmanship or 
dishonest trading on the part of any members of the 
guild would injure the reputation of the rest. 

In the 14th century the old idea of fraternity grad- 
ually died out, and the guilds became powerful com-— 
mercial and civic organizations. Toward the end of 
the reign of Edward III were established the following 
merchant companies, called the twelve great livery 
companies: mercers, grocers, drapers, fishmongers, 
goldsmiths, skinners, merchant-tailors, haberdashers, 

1 


2 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


salters, ironmongers, vintners, and cloth-workers. They 
are interesting in that the Lord Mayor of London was 
chosen from their ranks and in that from their number 
several famous capitalists and philanthropists emerged. 
These were Simon Eyre, draper, founder of Leadenhall, 
Thomas Gresham,! builder of the Royal Exchange, and 
Richard Whittington, mercer, founder of Whittington 
College. 

Instances of government interference in affairs of 
trade, of some interest and importance, may be studied 
in the acts of the Privy Council. A good illustration 
is the Statute of Apprentices, 1563. It compelled certain 
poor persons to work for arbitrarily assigned wages 
termed ‘‘reasonable wages.” There were restrictions 
on the hiring of a man from another parish. Working 
hours were regulated so as to gain the best effects of 
daylight, night work being forbidden as not conducive 
to good workmanship. Technical education was pro- 
vided for apprentices, and the proportion of these to 
journeymen was regulated. Artisans might apprentice 
only the sons of freemen; shopkeepers and merchants 
might apprentice only the well-to-do. 

English apprenticeship probably started in the 13th 
century.2. Toward the end of this century the records 
become more numerous. By 1300, London records were 
kept of the enrollment of apprentices; in the country 
this system was adopted later. It involved a youth’s 
binding himself to a master craftsman by indenture; 
i. e., by contract for a definite term, usually seven years, 

* Gresham was a mercer, according to The Dictionary of 


National Biography, and Hazlitt’s Livery Companies, p. 182; 
he was a grocer, according to Heywood’s If you know not me. 


* Dunlop and Denman: English Apprenticeship and Child 
Labor, p. 18. 


INTRODUCTION > 


with certain agreements. In the 15th century the re- 
cording of the contract was emphasized. There was 
also a proviso that apprentices must be twenty-four at 
the end of their term, and must remain single until 
that time. The length of the term varied: the gold- 
smiths, inasmuch as their craft involved much dex- 
terity and skill, insisted upon a ten-year period; certain 
of the lesser trades were satisfied with less than seven 
years. } 


A feature of the system which is very. important, 
but sometimes overlooked, is the personal relation be- 
tween the master and the apprentice, and frequently 
between the latter and the mistress and fellow-appren- 
tices and journeymen. Not only in the shop, but also 
in the home and in his private life did the apprentice 
come under the care and discipline of the master. He 
was supplied with food, lodging, clothes, and education, 
not only in the craft, but also, to some extent, in read- 
ing and writing. He ate with his fellows at the master’s 
table, was strictly guarded and watched as to his out- 
side amusements, being forbidden, in accordance with 
the terms of his indenture, to frequent taverns, to play 
dice or cards, or to be guilty of any incivility.2 The aim 
of the system was to furnish a skilled workman and 
an upright citizen. 

The master, in turn, was obliged to clothe, feed, and 
instruct the apprentice in the proper manner, or he 
was liable to be fined.‘ (Guild officers went on rounds 
of inspection, a supervision which became especially 
prominent in the 16th century.) The master had a 


> Dunlop, p. 55. 


* A master was fined for improperly clothing his apprentice. 
Clode: History of the Guild of the Merchant-Taylors, p. 521. 


4 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


legal right to punish, within certain limits, a way- 
ward apprentice.> Apprentices could be discharged for 
damages. If the latter amounted to over forty shillings, 
and the apprentice was over eighteen, he was con- 
sidered a criminal. Runaway apprentices were sought 
in different towns as if they were fugitive slaves. 
On the apprentice’s being captured and returned, the 
master was authorized to bind him with chains.* The 
well-behaved apprentice, however, was not considered 
a bondman, nor did his position extinguish his right 
to be regarded as one of the gentry.’ 

Indeed, well-to-do parents often apprenticed their 
sons to one of the more dignified companies, that they 
might profit by the discipline and training rather than 
by the knowledge of the technique of the particular 
craft. The position of apprentice in the mercer’s com- 
pany, e.g., was more dignified than in any other com- 
pany; such an apprentice did not have to supply his 
master with water from a tankard, as did other ap- 
prentices. Thus it is that the four royal born youths 
in Heywood’s Four Prentices of London are appren- 
ticed to a mercer, grocer, goldsmith, and haberdasher, 
all worshipful companies. Whittington, not poor as the 
popular tradition would have us believe, was of well- 
to-do parents and apprenticed to a mercer. 


In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, appren- 
ticeship was one of several avenues to citizenship. 
Freedom of the town was hereditary. One could be- 
come a burgess by gift, purchase, marriage, or by 


° In the 15th century the Merchant-Taylor Guild fined a man 
for unlawfully bruising his apprentice. Clode, p. 510. 


° R. Brodsky: Das Lehrlingswesen in England, p. 28. 
* Strype: Complete History of England, vol. 2, pp. 485-6. 


INTRODUCTION 5) 


serving as an apprentice to a freeman. If he was not 
the eldest son of a freeman, he would probably have 
to serve an apprenticeship to become free.’ 

The 16th century, however, introduced certain 
changes. Skill was no longer regarded as a requisite 
for admittance to a guild (the freedom of which also 
implied freedom of the town); but admittance other 
than by apprenticeship was exceptional.’ By 1560, 
qualifications for apprentices, such as birth (appren- 
tices must be of English blood), class, age, education, 
property, and physique, were stressed. Apprentices 
were generally forbidden to do any trading, but the 
Newcastle adventurers allowed them to bargain with 
limited stock after five years of service. The turning 
over of apprentices to another master was also re- 
stricted in the 16th century. The Statute of Appren- 
tices transformed apprenticeship from a guild system 
to a national one. A chief aim was to produce English 
goods of a high order. This statute extended the com- 
pulsory seven years’ apprenticeship of the woolen in- 
dustry to all the trades. Sufficient labor was further 
insured by the poor law of 1601 which compelled 
parents having too many children to apprentice some 
of them. 

The attire of apprentices was plain. At the end of 
the 16th century they were compelled to wear blue 
gowns in winter, and blue coats down to their calves 
in summer. Flat cloth caps, shining shoes, and plain 
stockings completed the attire. Apprentices were 
strictly forbidden to wear silk; they were allowed to 
carry no weapons except a pocket-knife. Apprentices, 
however, sometimes wore decorative apparel, as several 


* Dunlop, p. 40. ® Dunlop, p. 50. 


6 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


prohibitory statutes show; e.g., an ordinance of the 
mayor, 1582, restricting the gay clothes of apprentices. 


The results of such a system of education and dis- 
cipline were fairly favorable. The apprentice was not 
overworked; he sometimes had spending money; and 
he enjoyed many holidays. In his adolescent stage, he 
was better off in a position of mild servitude than 
were many unguarded youths of a later period. He 
came to have a feeling of responsibility as a citizen, 
without, however, much knowledge of how to show it. 
Several apprentices often became a mob, and were 
especially rowdyish in Tudor times. They were in- 
volved in such uprisings as Evil May Day, 1517.2° 
When any event occurred which did not meet with 
their approval, the nearby apprentices would cry, 
“clubs,”’ which was a signal to all apprentices in the 
neighborhood to arm themselves with cudgels from 
the shops, and to decide the matter by force. Their 
energies were boisterous, but seldom well directed. 
An achievement in which apprentices prided them- 
selves was the destruction of bawds’ houses on Shrove 
Tuesday. The noise and carnage did not end there, 
however; the ostensible purpose furnished an excuse 
for wrecking even comparatively innocent establish- 
ments. 


In literature the apprentice occupies a somewhat | 
conspicuous position when compared with that of 


7° In order to prevent a repetition of the Southwark disorder, 
the authorities were especially watchful of apprentices on Mid- 
summer Night, 1592. They were to be kept by their masters 
indoors; theaters and other meeting places were to be closed. 
Acts of the Privy Council, vol. 22, p. 549. 


*? The Roman plays of Shakespeare vividly portray the blind 
but brutish violence of the lower classes. 


INTRODUCTION fi 


journeyman, craftsmaster, or mistress. Authors show 
such bad aspects of the apprentice as have just been 
commented on. But they also tend to glorify him, 
especially in the late 16th century. It is not the mature 
and experienced journeyman or master that is usually 
chosen for the subject of a heroic story, but it is the 
youthful apprentice. 

After the seven years’ term of service, the appren- 
tice became free, and worked as journeyman for inde- 
pendent masters and for daily wages. In the 15th 
century the rule became stricter against employing 
for journeymen any but apprenticed men. In the Middle 
Ages, journeymen formed guilds, “yeomen guilds,” and 
occasionally rose in revolt against the master crafts- 
men.!? At first these associations amounted to little, 
but by the time of Elizabeth and James they were 
recognized by the municipality. Journeymen at these 
later times often married and ceased to wander. Their 
associations differed from those of the old master 
craftsmen mainly in being smaller: they had no chance 
to deal directly with the consumer.® Conditions were 
hard for them; they usually had to work in suburbs 
and to set up there on opening shops for themselves.** 
Their goal was to become independent masters, but 
industry and ability were frequently unrewarded. In 
the 16th century it became increasingly difficult to 
become a member of a guild; those already members 
tended to exclude any but their immediate relatives. 

There was often required of a candidate for admit- 
tance to a guild (a requisite stressed in the 17th cen- 

12 Lipson: Introduction to Economic History of England, 


p. 361. 
*% Lipson, p. 362. ** Besant, p. 219. 


8 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


tury) a masterpiece which embodied original crafts- 
manship of his particular trade. When this was not 
required, a test of some kind was usually called for. If 
the work therein was defective, the candidate might 
be taken as a hireman (at unsteady pay) in the trade, 
or be taken to perform in that craft certain functions 
in which he was efficient. Test work was first used 
in the tailor’s craft, one of the first to become capi- 
talistic.1° If this testing was carried on reasonably and 
fairly, it was an efficient standard of admittance; but 
impossible requirements in test-work might be made 
by those who were determined to exclude a candidate. 
Hence the condition of journeymen did not necessarily 
imply any lack of dexterity. Greene’s Defense of Con- 
nycatching, e. g.,17 presents a journeyman tailor more 
skilled in his profession than any of the master tailors 
in the neighborhood. 

The journeyman has a rather inconspicuous place in 
English literature with such few exceptions as are to 
be found in Deloney’s, Dekker’s and Rowley’s work. 

Something has already been said about the master- 
craftsman in his relation to the apprentice and journey- 
man, his necessary qualifications as a teacher and 
householder. It now remains to consider him as an 
individual. In the Middle Ages, the master-craftsman 
was considered fairly respectable and dignified, but he 
came to be gradually superseded by the merchant. In 
order to prevent this extinction, the more enterprising 
ones, such as Simon Eyre, became themselves merchants 
by speculating whenever possible; or by being trans- 

7° Dunlop, p. 220. 


** Unwin: Industrial Organization, p. 47. 
*" Grosart: Greene, vol. 11, p. 87. 


INTRODUCTION 9 


ferred from a handicraft to one of the twelve merchant 
companies. They aspired to become more than mere 
shopkeepers; they aimed at becoming merchants on 
a large scale, as Shakespeare’s Antonio or Heywood’s 
Gresham. Thereafter it was their ambition to become 
aldermen, mayors, and perhaps knights. The Lord 
Mayor of London was elected from one of the twelve 
companies, but local mayors were often members of 
smaller guilds.1® 

We have thus far spoken of the boy as an appren- 
tice. Girls also were apprenticed to craftsmasters and 
mistresses, although rarely.12 Women might become 
independent mistresses of a craft, but this also was 
rare. As early as the 14th century there were cases 
of girls being apprenticed. But few of those appren- 
ticed, either then or in the late Renaissance, ever be- 
came independent mistresses of a craft.2? The female 
apprentice was often occupied with helping the crafts- 
man’s wife in domestic work rather than with learning 
a trade. Her father would, in most cases, not pay the 
expenses (slight though these were) of apprenticing 
her, but hired her out as a maid of all work. This was 
much to the disadvantage of a girl; she had long hours © 
and sometimes heavy work, with no such compensating 
qualities as the male apprentices had who learned one 
thing well. 

Both before and after the Statute of Apprentices, 
the wives and daughters of craftsmen frequently 
helped them at their work. A woman who had assisted 

18 In Middleton’s Mayor of Queenborough Simon the tanner 
is made mayor. 

1° Phillis Flower; e.g., in The Fair Maid of the Exchange 


was a sempstress’s apprentice. 
2° Dunlop, p. 153. 


10 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


her husband at his work for seven years, might, on 
his decease, take up his trade. Seven years was the 
minimum term for women as well as for men, accord- 
ing to the Statute of Apprentices.” Thus we find 
women in the silk-weaving, dyeing, sewing, spinning, 
and brewing crafts. Inasmuch, however, as a woman’s 
time was frequently divided between household duties 
and the shop, she could seldom hope to become as 
efficient at a craft as a man who devoted his whole 
time to it. But her industry and solicitude for her 
husband’s success, as presented in 16th and early 17th 
century literature often arouse our interest.?* 


Something deserves to be said about the dress of 
the craftsman’s or merchant’s wife, since it is associ- 
ated with her increasing pride in the 17th century, her 
aspirations toward the courtly class, and her emergence 
as the social equal of her husband. In 1570 the 
citizen’s wife wore plain but colored clothing and linen 
caps. But by the 17th century, fashionable ruffs, 
farthingales, and elaborate aprons appeared. Stubbes, 
in The Anatomy of Abuses, 1583, complains of the 
number of artificers’ wives who wear velvet caps daily, 
and of the merchants’ wives who wear French hoods. 
Women of these classes also wore exquisite imitation 
jewels. 


After this cursory historical introduction to the 
crafts in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, brief 


2+ Dunlop, p. 148. 

7? One of the poor laws of Elizabeth gave commands to the 
poor to apprentice their girls until the age of twenty, and the 
boys until the age of twenty-four. 

*8 Deloney’s sketch of Eyre’s wife or Rowley’s Cicely are 
instances. 

*4 This is illustrated in Massinger’s City Madam, 1682. 


INTRODUCTION 11 


attention will now be given to some of the literature 
of these periods that relates to craftsmen. 


The Middle Ages may be hastily surveyed by a con- 
sideration of the work of one writer who reflects many 
phases of medieval literature, Chaucer. In the prologue 
to his Canterbury Tales are a number of artisans, the 
haberdasher, carpenter, weaver, dyer, upholsterer”> and 
wife of Bath (clothworker)”* being especially sub- 
stantial, prosperous, and proud. In a number of his 
tales, moreover; e. g., in the cook’s fragmentary story 
of a riotous apprentice and in the miller’s and carpen- 
ter’s tales there are good presentations of artisans. 

In the 16th century, preceding Elizabeth, literature 
was both satirical and idealistic. Cheating devices of 
craftsmen are represented in Skelton’s poem, The 


is “An Haberdassher and a Carpenter, 


A Webbe, a Dyere, and a Tapicer, 

Were with us eek, clothed in o liveree, 

Of a solempne and greet fraternitee. 

Ful fresh and newe hir gere apyked was;* 
Hir knyves were y-chaped noght with bras, 
But all with silver, wroght ful clene and weel, 
Hir girdles and hir pouches every-deel. 
Well semed ech of hem a fair burgeys, 

To sitten in a yeldhalle on a deys. 

Everich, for the wisdom that he can, 

Was shaply for to been an alderman. 

For catel hadde they y-nogh and rente, 
And eek hir wyves wolde it wel assente; 
And elles certein were they to blame, 

It is ful fair to been y-clept ‘ma dame,’ 

And goon to vigilyes al bifore, 

And have a mantel royalliche y-bore.” 


The Prologue, lines 360-380. 
* The privilege of wearing silver instead of brass was re- 
served for persons of a certain social eminence. 
See E. P. Kuhl’s Chaucer’s Burgesses in Transactions of the 
Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, vol. 18. 
26 Chaucer’s treatment of the Wife of Bath anticipates Mas- 
singer’s treatment of the city wife in his City Madam. 


12 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


Tunning of Elynour Rumming, Barclay’s Ship of Fools, 
Cocke Lorell’s Bote, and Powell’s Wyll of the Devyll; 
More’s Utopia, however, translated into English in 
1551, contains praise of certain crafts. 

In the following chapters representative works from 
the time of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation to about 1642 
will be carefully considered. A certain change in liter- 
ary attitude is roughly paralleled in all the literary 
forms (excepting the Lord Mayor’s Show) that we con- 
sider: prose, verse (including ballads??), and drama. 
Time and political vicissitudes alter literary themes: 
the Cavalier poetry introduces a different attitude; 
Deloney’s idealistic writing in the late 16th century 
is supplanted by Rowlands’ harsh and satiric presenta- 
tion of artisans in the first two decades of the 17th 
century ; Dekker’s and Rowley’s kindly attitude in their 
shoemaker plays of the late 16th and early 17th cen- 
tury respectively is supplanted by -satire and harsh 
realism in the work of later dramatists like Fletcher, 
Middleton, and Shirley. 

** Confusion between the old traditional type of ballad and 
the Elizabethan may be obviated by a consideration of the words 
of F. B. Gummere: 

“On the whole, aside from remoter origins, the ballad under 
Elizabeth, so far as it had any literary meaning, evidently 
covered on the one hand poems of love or satire which more or 
less vaguely suggested the French type, and, on the other, poems 
independent of such influence, pointing back to the traditional 
ballad, with its refrain, its tune, and its hints of the dance. But 


any occasional poem, grave or gay, which appeared as a broad- 
side could take the name unchallenged.” 


F. B. Gummere’s Old English Ballads, p. xxiii. 


CHAPTER I 


THE CRAFTSMAN AS A HEROIC FIGURE 


As depicted in the literature under consideration, 
artisans are extremely fond of spectacular shows, ex- 
hibitions, and parades of various kinds. This is weil 
illustrated in the Lord Mayor’s Show, a ceremony in 
which are often represented former patriotic and 
philanthropic mayors who rose from the craftsmen’s 
ranks. 

The novels of Thomas Deloney are rich in heroic 
craftsmen. In Jack of Newbury, the weaver, Jack, 
brings two hundred and fifty of his own workmen to 
Queen Katherine to fight against the Scots at Flodden 
Field. In the same author’s Thomas of Reading, the 
clothiers provide King Henry I. with soldiers to fight 
against Lewis, the French king. 

A craft which is best represented in this respect is 
the so-called Gentle Craft or shoemakers’ guild, the 
popular guild of the late 16th century. In the second 
part of Deloney’s Gentle Craft, Stukeley and Strang- 
widge, sea-captains, visit the shop of Peachy, the shoe- 
maker, and are insolent to the shoemakers, who defend 
themselves with their tools. Peachy and his men defeat 
the two sea-captains. It afterwards becomes the custom 
for two of Peachy’s men at a time to whip Stukeley 
and Strangwidge, so that the latter dread shoemakers 
and repent their former insolence. The feud is finally 


* Jack of Newbury, chap. 20. 
13 


14 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


settled by the Duke of Suffolk. Peachy, moreover, at 
his own cost, arms thirty of his own servants, and 
leads them to the king, who needs soldiers to defeat 
two thousand Frenchmen who have landed in the Isle 
of Wight. Seven of Peachy’s men are chosen as the 
king’s own guard; and Peachy, their captain, is made 
the king’s shoemaker. 

In the prose version (as well as in the play) of 
George a Green, the shoemakers of Merry Bradstead 
have ordered that all strangers in the town shall trail 
their staffs. When Robin Hood and George a Green 
and their followers refuse, many shoemakers of the 
town come out, armed with cudgels, to compel them 
to conform to this old custom. The shoemakers do 
not desist from their vigorous fighting until they 
recognize George a Green among their opponents. 
Robin Hood and George soon fraternize with them, 
because of their valor. When George tells them that 
he and Robin Hood have traveled from Sherwood 
Forest to Bradstead to prove what mettle was in their 
fraternity, this is as good as a plaster to every man’s 
broken head. 

More illustrative still of the craftsmen’s pride in 
their own heroic exploits and intimately associated 
with the folk history of the Gentle Craft, are the stories 
of Crispine and Crispianus in the first part of Deloney’s 
Gentle Craft. The stories of Crispine and Crispianus 
are warlike, and are based on tradition dear to the 
shoemaker’s guild. The tyrant, Maximinus, perse- 
cutes the sons of the English sovereign, Crispine and 
Crispianus. As a refuge, they apprentice themselves 
to the shoemakers’ trade. Crispine is wooed and won 
by the emperor’s daughter, Ursula. His brother, 


THE CRAFTSMAN AS A HEROIC FIGURE 15 


Crispianus, meanwhile, fights bravely against the 
Persians in France, and defeats the opposing gen- 
eral, Iphicratis. Shoemakers feel greatly flattered on 
finding that both of these apprentices are of noble 
blood, and that Crispianus has fought so nobly in 
battle. 

The popularity of these warlike stories is attested 
by the fact that several plays and chapbooks are 
based upon them. There is a non-extant play, Crispin 
and Crispianus, acted by the shoemakers’ companies 
of towns before 1643.2 It was apparently a rough 
dramatization of Deloney’s story. Rowley, in his Shoe- 
maker a Gentleman, 1609, dramatizes Deloney’s nar- 
rative, making a stirring play. Two chapbooks that 
follow Deloney and that underwent several editions 
are The Shoemakers’ Glory and The History of Crispin 
and Crispianus. Crude and improbable though these 
stories of the Gentle Craft are, they are valuable as 
illustrations of the craftsmen’s pride. They have im- 
portance in this study, inasmuch as many of these 
extravagant tales were believed by credulous crafts- 
men, especially apprentices, and constantly referred 
to by them. 

Another feature of the works just described is no- 
ticeable; i. e., the love of the craftsman for association 
with royalty. A favorite theme in Deloney’s novels is 
the entertainment of the king by the hero-craftsman. 
In Jack of Newbury, to take an illustration, Jack the 
weaver is rewarded for his prowess and patriotism by 
Queen Katharine’s “putting forth her lillie white hand 
and giving it to him to kiss.’ Another illustration is 


* Referred to in Halliwell’s Dictionary of Old English Plays. 
* Chapter 2. 


16 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


in the fact that three princes in Deloney’s Gentle Craft 
apprentice themselves to shoemakers. Craftsmen, then, 
were particularly fond of being (if only in the least 
degree) associated with, or in proximity to royalty, 
and boasted of any such relation for a long time after- 
ward. A nod or a smile from a king or the enlistment 
of one of the royal family in one of the great com- 
panies was considered an exceptional honor. The ar- 
tisans themselves often aspire to no less than knight- 
hood and ladyship. This theme occurs frequently in 
the literature to be discussed. Keen-sighted persons 
realize that this weakness and susceptibility to flattery 
exist in craftsmen, and often sway the latter or his 
family by working on this trait. It is partly for this 
reason that demagogues like Bolingbroke in Richard IT 
and Antony in Julius Caesar succeed so well in dealing 
with craftsmen and citizens, and that Coriolanus, with 
his inability to flatter, fails so wretchedly. The popular 
story of Jane Shore is given much tragic force by the 
fact that she, a goldsmith’s wife, is “beloved of a king,” 
and advanced to royal eminence and power, only to be 
cast down utterly during the period of his successor. 

A work, partly prose* and partly verse, which extols 
craftsmen to an extravagant degree is Richard John- 
son’s Nine Worthies of London, 1592, dedicated to Sir 
William Webbe, Knight and Lord Mayor.® It has, for 
the most part, the favorite theme of the valiant appren- 
tice of low birth, who does deeds of patriotic prowess. 
Seven of the nine are thus celebrated; the others, Sir 
Henry Pritchard and especially Sir Thomas White, 


* Prose parts are concerned with dialogues and extravagant 
eulogies of Clio and Fame; the verse deals with the worthies’ 
accounts of their own histories, and their boasting. 

5° Harleian Miscellany, vol. 8. 


THE CRAFTSMAN AS A HEROIC FIGURE 1 


are celebrated for less spectacular but equally substan- 
tial services to the nation. The heroes, with the excep- 
tion of Sir Thomas White of the period of Queen Mary, 
are medieval craftsmen like those celebrated in the 
Lord Mayor Shows, about whom certain popular and 
frequently erroneous traditions have collected. 

The first one, Sir William Walworth, fishmonger and 
mayor, is an important figure in a study of craftsmen. 
He is sometimes mentioned as a patriotic model to be 
followed by soldier craftsmen. As he is famous for 
his fighting ability and military glory, he is an ever- 
present figure in the Lord Mayor Shows in which the 
Mayor-elect is from the ranks of the fishmongers.‘® 
Walworth is represented as the aged soldier who de- 
feated the rebels of Kent and Essex, stabbing Tyler, 
the leader of the rebellion. He speaks in high praise 
of himself, as do all the worthies successively (and as 
do some of those in the Lord Mayor’s Show). 

A romantic and patriotic hero of the chivalric period 
of the Black Prince, the merchant-tailor, Sir John 
Hawkwood, is very popular. He is celebrated in the 
Merchant-Tailor Lord Mayor Shows; e. g., in Webster’s 
Monuments of Honor. He boastfully describes his 
conduct in battle as follows: 


That day, the prince of Wales, surnamde ‘the Black’ 
Did mount me on a gallant English steed; 

Where I bestride me so upon his backe, 

That none incountred me that did not bleed. 


* These spectacular Lord Mayor Shows celebrate exemplary 
and patriotic mayors of past time; i.e., those valorous in battle 
and those famous for philanthropy, as White and Pritchard. 
They differ from Johnson’s work, however, in being an equal 
tribute to the craft itself of the Lord Mayor, and in going into 
some description of its early history. 


18 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


This Hawkwood was fourth of the dubbed knights, and 
was given a gold chain by the Black Prince. He fights 
for the Duke of Milan, a service for which he gains 
castles and towers, and helps Spain against the Pope. 

Others of the nine who distinguish themselves in a 
similar way are Sir William Sevenoake, a grocer; Sir 
John Bonham, a mercer and knight; Sir Christopher 
Croker, a vintner and knight; and Sir Hugh Caverley, 
a silk-weaver and knight. This work is clumsy and 
lacking in, force, partly owing to the fact that the 
heroes boastfully rehearse their own deeds in childish 
and stereotyped manner. It goes into no detail or 
differentiation of the various crafts represented; but 
it illustrates well the interest of the craftsman in shows 
and spectacles. 


Ballads and songs are not deficient in this praise 
of the valiant artisan. Beginning about 1590 and con- 
tinuing until about 1605 there are commemorative 
ballads of patriotic heroism on the part of craftsmen. 
Perhaps song is the best medium for this; exploits can 
be better represented thus than on the stage. Of 
several ballads that enter into extravagant praise of 
the apprentice as a soldier, The Honor of a London 
Prentice’ is a good instance. This apprentice defeats 
twenty Turkish knights in a tournament. Imprisoned 
with two hungry lions, he thrusts his arms down their 
throats, tears their hearts out, and throws them at 
those looking on. 


* Evans’ Old Ballads, vol. 3, page 35. 
Seek all the world about, 
And you shall hardly find, 
A man in valour to exceed 
A prentice gallant mind. 


THE CRAFTSMAN AS A HEROIC FIGURE 19 


Ballads somewhat similar to this one are Deloney’s 
Shoemakers Song on Crispianus Night;? A Use of Ex- 
hortation to the London Prentices, 1643;° The Jovial 
Broom Man; How Wat Tyler and Jacke Straw re- 
belled against King Richard II;" A Ballad in Praise 
of London Prentices and what they did at the Cockpit 
playhouse in Drury Lane, 1617.22, Women as well as 
men from the ranks of the artisans are sometimes the 
subjects of such ballads, as is the case with Long Meg 
of Westminster, the stalwart victuallar, subject of a 
lost ballad written in 1590, ca., The Coy Cook Maid 
portrays an energetic craftswoman who is a match for 
men. This cook, wrongly called coy, is courted in vain 
by Irish, Welsh, Spanish and Dutch suitors. She breaks 
a Scotch suitor’s head with her ladle, and threatens tu 
thrust a spit through a French suitor. She is finally 
won by a poor English tailor. This ballad is interesting 
partly because of its satire on foreigners. 


As was stated before, the popular shoemakers’ guild 
is well celebrated in this respect. Shoemakers are 
valiant in the prose and dramatic work on George a 
Green. A shoemaker is a soldier in Locrine, 1595, and 
in Dekker’s Shoemakers’ Holiday, 1599. A play called 
Crispin and Crispianus, acted by the shoemakers’ com- 
panies of towns before 1643,1* Rowley’s Shoemaker a 


® The Gentle Craft, Part 1, end of chap. 9. 

® Percy Socy. Pub., vol. 1, p. 67. 

7° Roxburghe Ballads, vol. 2, p. 129. 

72 Deloney’s Strange Histories, Canto 10. 

#2 Percy Socy. Pub., vol. 1, p. 94. 

78 Roxburghe Ballad Socy., vol. 3, p. 626. 

74 “Crispin and Crispianus cost more trouble: the princes 
could ever borrow their tools from any journeyman shoemaker; 
but then the robes and decorations of the queens and nobles were 
forced to be carried up and down in knapsacks.” The Original 
Works of William King, LL. D., vol. 1, p. 180. 


20 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


Gentleman, 1609, and Rawlin’s Rebellion, 1637,» follow 
to a greater or less degree Deloney’s stories of valiant 
shoemakers. In Shakespeare’s Henry V, 1599, the king 
appeals to his fellow-countrymen to fight with him on 
the day called “the feast of Crispian.’** This day, 
celebrating the patron saint of the shoemakers, lends a 
certain spirit of fraternity and co-operation to Henry’s 
stirring appeal, reviving in the minds of the artisans 
the warlike and chivalric stories of the heroes of the 
Gentle Craft. 


We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; 
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me 
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile 

This day shall gentle his condition.*’ 


Two plays that deal with popular uprisings of 
craftsmen and the repression of these in each case 
by a patriotic mayor and craftsmen are Heywood’s 
Edward IV, Part I, 1600; and the anonymous play, 
The Life and Death of Jack Straw, 1598. In the latter, 
William Walworth, fishmonger and Lord Mayor, the 
stock figure in the fishmonger Lord Mayor’s Shows, 
gathers patriotic Englishmen and succeeds in quelling 
the rebellion and in stabbing Straw, one of the leaders. 
According to the play, Walworth’s dagger is put in 
the city arms by the king. 

An interesting play of this nature is Anthony 
Brewer’s Love-Sick King, 1605. Grim the collier of 
Newcastle leads an army of his own workmen, and 

7° This play presents tailors as valiant fighters, but follows 
roughly the plan of Rowley’s Shoemaker a Gentleman. 

*¢ Shakespeare is unhistorical here, the date of the Battle of 
Agincourt being unknown. 


*" Henry V, Act 4, sce. 8, lines 60-64. “gentle his condition,” 
i.e., make him a gentleman. 


THE CRAFTSMAN AS A HEROIC FIGURE | 21 


takes King Canute prisoner. Grim is not in the least 
slow in claiming this credit for the Newcastle colliers, 
and declares that Newcastle strength has set England 
free: | 

If you wo’d rake hell and Phlegitan, 

Acaron and Barrathrum, all these 

Low countries cannot yeeld you such a company. 

Tara, ra, ra, ra, ra, O brave master, 

Now for a company of conquering colliers.**® 
For his national service, Grim is made the king’s coal- 
bearer. 

The most famous extant illustration in drama of the 
success of craftsmen in battle is Thomas Heywood’s 
Four Prentices of London, 1594, ca. This, together 
with Bold Beauchamps, a lost play, dramatizing the 
exploits of Thomas, first Earl of Warwick, is referred 
to in Beaumont and Fletcher’s burlesque, The Knight 
of the Burning Pestle, 1613. The play has no real 
delineation of craftsmen; aside from the fact that we 
are told that the Earl of Bouillon’s four sons are ap- 
prentices to four of the great crafts, they do not refer 
to any features of their crafts as Rowley’s or Dekker’s 
craftsmen do to theirs. 

The banished earl, disguised as a London citizen, 
apprentices his sons as follows: Godfrey, to a mercer; 
Guy, to a goldsmith; Charles, to a haberdasher; 
Eustace, to a grocer. 

All high born 
Yet of the city-trades they have no scorn.*°® 


oeereeseeseer eee ere eee eeeeeeeerer eee estes eeeeeeee eee 


Kings themselves have of these trades been free. 


18 A. Brewer: The Love-Sick King. A. E. H. Swaen edition, 
line 1680. Grim is alluding to the popular association of colliers 
with devils. 

1° Page 408. Text is Dodsley: Old English Plays, vol. 6. 


i] 


22 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


Guy speaks of the advantage of knowing a trade, inas- 
much as all kingdoms are subject to Fortune’s frowns; 
and a banished prince who is skilled in some trade 
will never want. These princes fight bravely, recover 
Jerusalem from the infidels, and Guy becomes ruler. 
Each of the champions bears on his shield the arms 
of the trade to which he was bound.” 


The tribute paid to craftsmen as fighters in some of 
these plays; e.g., A Shoemaker a Gentleman or The 
Four Prentices of London, is not as great as it might 
appear at first sight. In the former play, Crispianus, 
the prince, is the noble and valiant person (he is shoe- 
maker only as a temporary makeshift) ; Barnaby, the 
journeyman, is the cowardly churl. In The Rebellion 
we have the noble Giovanni contrasted with the real 
tailor and coward, Vermine. In Heywood’s play these 
noble youths are craftsmen but for a time. The best 
tribute to craftsmen is seen in the wishes of Eustace — 
and Charles that they had apprentices from the dif- 
ferent towns to help them fight. Certain plays to be 
considered later, some of which may have been written 
with those just described in mind, such as Alarum for 
London, Coriolanus, The Famous History of the Life 
and Death of Captain Thomas Stukeley, as well as 
such a burlesque as The Knight of the Burning Pestle, 
illustrate the helplessness of untrained citizens in 
battle. In Beaumont and Fletcher’s Philaster, for ex- 
ample, the captain exhorts the citizens to leave their 

*° Eustace’s grocers’ arms on his shield may have suggested 
to Beaumont and Fletcher to make Ralph a grocer’s apprentice 
in The Knight of the Burning Pestle. : 

A ballad, that is non-extant, perhaps dealing with the same 


theme, is The honours achieved in Fraunce and Spaine by four 
prentices of London, 1592. 


THE CRAFTSMAN AS A HEROIC FIGURE 23 


base crafts and shops and to fight nobly; i.e., not in 
honor of their crafts, but in spite of the fact that 
they are craftsmen.”? 


*? Act 5, se. 1, of Philaster. A rather exceptional treatment 
in the later drama is in Fletcher and Massinger’s The Double 
Marriage, after 1622. Here the citizens support Sesse against 
the tyrant, Ferrand, and make him King of Naples. 


CHAPTER II 
THE ARTISAN AS SPECULATOR AND PHILANTHROPIST 


This chapter represents the craftsmen more as they 
aspired to be than as they actually were, but it has 
historical significance, inasmuch as the Elizabethan 
age was one of speculation. A brief account of the 
history of the merchant-tailors will illustrate the as- 
piration of craftsmen from early times through the 
reign of James I to be considered merchants, a mer- 
chant being frequently a master-craftsman as well.? 
The tailors were granted a charter, incorporated a 
company, and given the name of tailors or linen- 
armorers by King Edward I. As the company grew, it 
became a rich and powerful fraternity, taking the 
function of trading. Henry VII gave the tailors the 
title of “merchant-tailors,” in recognition of their trad- 
ing privileges. Their pride in the title is shown in 
The Merchant-Tailors’ Song; and in Lord Mayor shows 
that celebrate the election of a mayor who is a tailor, 
Henry VII is presented among the other kings free of 
that company, and his charter forming them a trading 
company is mentioned. Dekker artfully describes the 
aspiration of craftsmen toward world-wide trade, at 
the prosperous period of the accession of James I. 


“Taylors meant no more to be called merchant-taylors, but 


* Whether or not a merchant was a master-craftsman, he 
frequently began as a manual worker, this applying sometimes 
even to the great merchant-adventurers. 


24 


THE ARTISAN AS SPECULATOR AND PHILANTHROPIST 25 


merchants, for their shops were all lead forth in leases to be 
turned into ships, and with their sheares (instead of a Rudder) 
would they have cut the Seas (like Leuant Taffaty) and sayld 
to the West Indies for no worse stuffe to make hose and doublets 
of, than beaten gold.’”’ 


The praise of altruistic craftsmen and civic officials 
from their ranks is to be found in Johnson’s Nine 
Worthies of London. White, a merchant-tailor; Prit- 
chard, a vintner and knight; and Sevenoake, a grocer, 
are instances. 

The self-made man is a favorite subject in Deloney’s 
fiction. A brief introduction to this important writer 
may now be given. He gives a well-rounded delineation 
of artisans. Himself a silkweaver, Deloney is entirely 
sympathetic; his very themes are those most pleasing 
to craftsmen: the rise of the industrious artisan, and 
especially the exploits of artisans in battle. There is 
extremely little of the darker aspect of city life, which 
appears in later literature; i.e., faithlessness within 
the home, and cheating and bitter rivalry within the 
shop. Instead, nearly everything is presented in a 
cheerful atmosphere. There is merry singing accom- 
panying the work (and frequently, which is not the 
case at present, the songs glorify the work itself), 
Robin, a journeyman shoemaker, being an especial ex- 
ponent of this. There is throughout a spirit of fra- 
ternity and co-operation. Comic byplots, though often 
coarse, are humorous, consisting generally of merry 
pranks. There is a certain amount of romance with 
the realism, a most successful instance being the love 
story of Crispine and Ursula. In Deloney’s portraits 
of several energetic, competent, and proud women, he 


* The wonderfull yeare, 1603, Grosart, vol. I, p. 100. 


26 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


anticipates an interest in, though a different treat- 
ment of, the craftsman’s wife on the part of several 
Jacobean writers. 

His three novels are Jack of Newbury, celebrating 
weavers; The Gentle Craft, in two parts, dealing with 
shoemakers; and Thomas of Reading, celebrating 
clothiers, — all written between 1596 and 1600. Each 
novel is a collection of loosely connected stories, usually 
centering about craftsmen and craftswomen. The 
stories range from moral ones to coarse farces and 
horseplay. Taken all in all, there is much charm in the 
writer; he influenced literature dealing with crafts. 

Jack of Newbury, 1596, depicts a historical figure, 
John Winchcomb, a clothier of the time of Henry VII 
and Henry VIII, who may have built the church vestry 
of Newbury. Deloney’s treatment follows the main 
events of Winchcomb’s life. He is first presented as 
an industrious and steady weaver’s apprentice, who, 
at the death of his master, is intrusted by his mistress 
with the charge of all the workers for three years. She 
rejects three wealthy suitors, a tanner, tailor, and 
parson, and woos and weds Jack. Her aggressiveness 
contrasts with his passiveness, it being a common 
theme with Deloney to depict a man who is overruled 
by his wife. On the death of his wife, Jack becomes 
a rich and eminent clothier, afterwards marrying one 
of his own poor but industrious servants. 

Jack often shows to his servants pictures of great 
men of humble descent, usually sons of craftsmen. To 
Jack’s workers this serves as an example and an incen- 
tive to industry. Some of the pictures are as follows: 
King Agathocles of Sicily, a poor potter’s son; Iphi- 
crates, an Athenian general, son of a cobbler; Emperor 


THE ARTISAN AS SPECULATOR AND PHILANTHROPIST 27 


Aelius Pertinax, and Marcus Aurelius, sons of weavers; 
and Emperor Diocletian, son of a bookbinder.* 

The novel presents some of the trials of the artisan 
as well as his success and festivities. The clothworkers 
present to the king a petition stating the difficulty of 
selling cloth, and requesting permission to traffic with 
foreign countries. Cardinal Wolsey, at that time Lord 
Chancellor, and a bitter foe to artisans, delays the 
granting of the petition. This is partly because of his 
hearing of a statement from Jack to the effect that 
the cardinal would never have his present position had 
his father (a butcher) been as slow in killing a calf 
as Wolsey is in granting poor men’s suits. This reflec- 
tion on the cardinal’s low birth causes Wolsey to im- 
prison the clothiers for a time. Their petition, how- 
ever, is finally granted. 


Not only the chief figures in Deloney’s novels, but 
also some of the incidental persons are represented 
as rising from humble positions to eminence, partly 
through their own merits and partly through good 
fortune. An instance is in the story of Pert, a former 
draper, who is imprisoned because of his debts to 
several persons, including Jack. Jack, now a burgess 
for Newbury, sees Pert at work as a porter, and gives 
him capital to furnish a draper’s shop again. He 
prospers, becoming sheriff and finally alderman. 

Many disconnected stories abound, some of them 
dealing with horseplay and introducing popular well 
known individuals, such as Will Sommers, the court 

® Similarly, in Heywood’s If You Know not Me, You Know 
Nobody, Gresham and his friends are shown pictures of illustri- 
ous citizens who were formerly poor craftsmen. In this senti- 


mental passage, tears of admiration are brought to their eyes, 
and ambition to be remembered after death is aroused. 


28 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


fool. The unity of such a work as Jack of Newbury is 
to be found not in plot, but in the constant dealing 
with weavers and clothiers, and in the personality and 
influence of Jack. 

In Thomas of Reading, also, we have a collection 
of many loosely connected stories, centering approx- 
imately about the following clothiers: Thomas Cole of 
Reading, Tom Dove of Exeter, Gray of Gloucester, 
William Fitzallen of Worcester, Sutton of Salisbury, 
Simon of Southampton, Hodgkins of Halifax, Cutbert 
of Kendall, and Martin Briam of Manchester. As the 
previously described novel, this one is full of antiqua- 
rian interest. It has apparently a greater proportion 
of fiction, although Cole is mentioned by historians; 
e.g., in Fuller’s Worthies of England; Coates’ History 
of Reading mentions him as a rich clothier. The novel 
treats certain clothing centers and popular clothiers 
that have become associated with these. 


Certain interesting parallels to Jack of Newbury 
may be mentioned. There are several instances in 
which the clothiers entertain one of the royal family; 
e.g., on one occasion*t the two princes, William and 
Robert, and on another® King Henry I, at Worcester, 
who ‘‘returned to London, with great joy of his Com- 
mons.” 

A somewhat more important parallel is one in which 
the clothiers make various requests to the king. One 
of these is that all cloth measures be standardized, a 
matter which is settled by the king’s calling the length 
of his own arm a yard and the standard.® Another 

* Chapter 5. 5 Chapter 7. 


‘ Another tradition states that a yard was the length of 
another king’s arm, that of Edward I. 


THE ARTISAN AS SPECULATOR AND PHILANTHROPIST 29 


request is that people may be made to take as current 
the cracked coins of which the clothiers have a store. 
A third request is that those who rob clothiers may 
instantly be hanged. All these requests are granted. 

‘Still another comparison with Jack of Newbury is 
in the picture of the substantial and prosperous Thomas 
Cole of Reading. We do not get the presentation of 
the clothiers at work, as we did in the case of the 
weavers. But Cole is said to have daily in his house 
a hundred men servants and forty maids; he maintains 
two or three hundred people, spinners and carders, and 
many householders. 

The clothiers were an honnred livery company. 
Though the trade was last of the twelve great ones, 
this novel attempts to show that it was an eminent 
and respectable calling; it was the chief craft, dealing 
with the greatest merchandise; the younger sons of 
knights and gentlemen who inherited no land, gen- 
erally took to this trade.’ A story in the novel that 
illustrates this is that of the Earl of Shrewsbury’s 
daughter, Margaret, who, left resourceless, is adopted 
by Gray’s wife as an apprentice. She is untrained for 
any manual work, but reveals her high breeding in the 
fact that she can read and write; she is, therefore, 
apprenticed to an honorable craft. 

Thomas of Reading is interesting and important be- 
cause of its influence on several other works. Three 
non-extant plays dealing with clothiers are supposed, 
in the main, to be based on this novel as a source. 

Deloney’s Gentle Craft, Part 1, 1597; and Part 2, 
perhaps early in 1598, deals with shoemakers, the 
popular guild of the late 16th century. The prevailing 


* This is brought out in Deloney’s introduction. 


30 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


attitude in literature toward this guild is kindlier thar 
toward most crafts, even the great livery companies. 
The novel is rich in the agreeable features also seen 
in the other two novels, such as a spirit of fraternity, 
cheerfulness, folk stories and realistic treatment of the 
artisans’ lives. Important figures are Crispine and 
Crispianus, celebrated in chapbooks, ballads, plays, and 
pageants. The story used is drawn from the familiar 
patron saint legend. 

Substantial shoemakers are Richard Casteler, who,. 
because of his industry and early rising, is called “Cock 
of Westminster,’ and who contributes to the poor of 
Westminster and forty pounds to the poor children of 
Christ’s Hospital ;? Peachy, a Fleet Street shoemaker, 
who has forty tall workmen besides apprentices, whom 
he has wait on him on holidays with sword and buck- 
ler ;? and Simon Eyre. 

The story of Simon Eyre and his rise from poverty 
as a London shoemaker’s apprentice to riches and the 
position of Mayor of London, is one which may distort 
actual truth as the story of Whittington does, in claim- 
ing that the latter was of low birth. 


“Albeit he descended from mean parentage, yet, by God’s bless- 
ing, in the end he came to be a most worthy man in the com- 
monwealth.” 


A story of Eyre’s early life is associated with a 
folk story of interest. On Sunday morning it was the 
apprentices’ custom to breakfast on pudding-pies (i. e., 
puddings of baked meats). One Sunday, Eyre, having 
no money ‘‘to pay the shot” (i.e., his share of the ex- 

* Thomas Deloney’s The Gentle Craft. Part 2. Edited by A. 


F. Lange. 
Wh af: a rir" 


THE ARTISAN AS SPECULATOR AND PHILANTHROPIST 31 


pense), borrows from the others, promising that if 
ever he becomes Lord Mayor of London, he will give 
a breakfast to all London apprentices. This is, of 
course, realized in the Shrove Tuesday pancake feast. 
Another feature of the story is interesting and typical 
of a number of self-made craftsmen, as Whittington, 
and Thornton in Brewer’s The Love-Sick King; i.e., 
they have a premonition in their days of youth and 
poverty that they will some day become famous. 
Having served his apprenticeship, Eyre gets a shop 
and marries. His marriage is very fortunate, for his 
wife is a good assistant to him in his work. Her in- 
terest is especially in his welfare, as we shall see later. 
He hires a French journeyman, who tries to persuade 
him to buy a certain cargo of five thousand pounds 
worth of lawns, cambric, and other articles of linen, 
commodities very rare in London at that time. His 
wife also persuades him to bargain with the Greek 
merchant for the cargo, and to say that he does so in 
behalf of one of the chief aldermen in the city. 


“For in the morning thou shalt go to him in thy doublet of 
sheep’s skins, with a smuched face, and thy apron before thee, 
thy thumb leather and hand-leather buckled close to thy wrist, 
with a foule band about thy neck, and a greasie cap on thy 
head.’’*° 


She tells him that he must afterwards dress like an 
alderman to give an impression of dignity and wealth, 
having a beard fashioned like an alderman’s, a fair 
doublet of tawny satin with a damask cassock that is 
furred about the skirts, breeches of black velvet, a 
white band about the neck, cuffs on the wrists, a black 
velvet gown, and gloves on his hands, and a gold ring 


1° Page 67. 


32 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


on his forefinger. This pictures well the dress of an 
alderman, an official that ambitious craftsmen strove 
to become, and illustrates, together with the above 
quoted passage, Deloney’s interest in clothing and his 
skill in describing it. His wife, moreover, will have 
the handsome barber accompany him to the merchant, 
as if he were his man. The deceptive plan is success- 
ful; Eyre succeeds in purchasing the cargo on credit, 
all steps having been laid out by his wife. 

The Mayor and the Mayoress invite the Eyres to 
supper. Eyre’s wife is especially proud of associating 
with the mayor and other great ones, and talks about 
it to her friends, her pride consisting chiefly in the fact 
that her husband is “the rich shoemaker that bought 
all the goods in the great argozy:” 


““Of a truth,’ quoth she, ‘although I sate closely by my ladie’s 
side, I could eat nothing for very joy to heare and see that we 
were so much made of. And never give me credit, husband, if 
I did not hear the officers whisper as they stood behind me and 
all demanded one of another what you were and what I was. 
“0,” quoth, one, “do you see this man. Mark him well, and 
marke his wife well, that simple woman that sits next my ladie 
— what are they?” “What are they?” quoth another. “Marry, 
this is the rich shoomaker that bought all the goods in the great 
argozy. I tell you there was never such a shoomaker seen in 
London since the city was builded.” “Now, by my faith,” quoth 
the third, “I have heard much of him to-day among the mer- 
chants in the street, going between the Two Chains.” Credit 
me, husband, of mine honesty this was their communications. 
Nay, and do you not remember, when the rich citizen drank to 
you — which craved pardon because he knew not your name — 
what my Lord Maior said? “Sir,” quoth he, “his name is Master 
Eyer.” Did you mark that? And presently thereupon he added 
these words: “this is the gentleman that bought” — and so forth. 
“The gentleman” — understood you? Did you heare him speake 
that word?’ 


THE ARTISAN AS SPECULATOR AND PHILANTHROPIST 33 


“In troth, wife.’ quoth he, ‘my lord uttered many good words 
of me, I thank his Honour, but I heard not that.’ 


“*No?’ quoth she. ‘I heard it well enough, for by and by he 
proceeded further, saying: “I suppose, though he sit here in 
simple sort, he is more sufficient to beare this charge than 
myselfe.” Yea, thought I, he may thank his wife for that, if it 
come so to passe.’ ’’*? 


This excellent passage compares with some of the 
best delineations in drama. Condensed as it is, abound- 
ing in key words, as “gentleman,” “lady,” “merchant,” 
and expressions, as “I have heard much of him today 
among the merchants,” and “he is more sufficient to 
beare this charge than myselfe;” i.e., the mayoralty, 
it portrays an aspiring craftswoman, a type which is 
treated much in drama of the early 17th century. But 
there is this feature about her that differentiates her 
from some of the craftsmen’s wives portrayed by 
Jonson, Marston, and Massinger, and Dekker’s Dame 
Margery in The Shoemakers’ Holiday. Her interest is 
less in gay clothing and ceremonies than in the fact 
that she and her husband have actually accomplished 
something of note. Keen and energetic as she is, she 
hears such words as those quoted above, and thinking 
not of empty titles and fancy raiment alone, she regards 
such talk as a harbinger of future success, a view 
which is entirely overlooked by her dull and passive 
husband. Dekker shifts the emphasis in his Dame 
Margery to an interest in gorgeous attire, not in com- 
mercial enterprise. The initiative in Dekker’s play is 
in Hyre. 

Eyre speculates in various commodities and becomes 
very rich. Offered the position of sheriff, he is re- 


11 Pages 71 and 72. 


34 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


luctant to take so great a place. His wife, however, 
is always at hand to encourage him. She ealls to his 
attention his great wealth, and appeals to his religion 
and patriotism: “You have enough to discharge the 
place whereunto you are called, with credit, and where- 
fore sendeth God goods but therewithall to do him and 
your country service?’’?? 

Eyre is chosen mayor and becomes a draper. In 
accordance with his youthful vow, he invites, on Shrove 
Tuesday, the apprentices to a pancake breakfast in his 
own house. He builds Leadenhall, where there is a 
market every Monday for leather, where shoemakers 
may buy of tanners. 

Deloney’s Gentle Craft, as was stated before, is in 
part the source of several plays; e. g., Dekker’s Shoe- 
makers’ Holiday, 1599. In this play, Eyre is repre- 
sented as very industrious, bustling, and humorous, 
far more realistic than the puppet figure of Deloney. 
The fact of his having so many journeymen is an in- 
dication of success, since these were expensive; many 
masters could afford only apprentices. Eyre buys from 
a ship captain a certain commodity which eventually 
enriches him. He is made sheriff, and later (partly 
because of the death of certain aldermen) Lord Mayor 
of London. Unlike Gresham or Thornton, Eyre is in- 
different as to forms, ceremony, or display. Indeed, 
the early part of the play does not present him as 
ever expecting to be Mayor. Entertaining the King 
at a banquet, he is not in the least abashed nor ex- 
cited (as many tradespeople would be) in the presence 

72 Page 79. 

** The purchase of the commodity is slurred over in Dekker’s 


play; in Deloney’s novel, on the other hand, it is given some 
elaboration. 


THE ARTISAN AS SPECULATOR AND PHILANTHROPIST 35 


of royalty. The king calls the building, erected in 
Cornhill by Eyre, ‘“Leaden Hall,” because Eyre found, 
in digging for it, the lead to cover it. He also grants 
to the shoemakers, at the request of Eyre, a patent 
to hold two market days for leather in Leaden Hall. 
Eyre is one of the most natural and carefree of men, 
one who is well described by a nobleman to the king: 


Your grace will think when you behold the man, 
Hee’s rather a wild Ruffian than a Maior; 

Yet thus much Ile ensure your Majestie, 

In all his actions that concerns his state, 

He is as serious, provident, and wise 

As full of gravitie amongst the grave, 

As any Maior hath been these many yeares.** 


Eyre’s vow to give the apprentices a pancake break- 
fast on Shrove-Tuesday reappears here. He fulfils this 
vow out of a spirit of fraternity for his workmen, not 
out of any special love for display. The apprentices 
call Shrove-Tuesday Saint Hugh’s Holiday.” 

The interesting theme of speculation may be briefly 
touched on. It draws us away somewhat from a study 
of handicraftsmen, but is still connected with their 
aspirations and ideals, for the artisans in this literature 
are desirous of becoming famous speculators. The 
opening lines of Marlowe’s Jew of Malta, Salarino’s 
poetic speech in The Merchant of Venice,?* and parts 
of Fletcher and Massinger’s Beggars’ Bush, 1622, 
portray with imaginative force the power of the suc- 
cessful merchant, and also the dangers that he has 
to undergo. 


** Volume 1 of 1873 edition of Dekker, p. 70. 

*® Dekker’s Shoemakers’ Holiday will be described more fully 
later. 

act. 1. sc.’ 3. 


36 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


Speculation is often closely associated with the 
founding of institutions, such as colleges or hospitals. 
This is usually accomplished only by the mature and 
successful speculator, but even the ambitious appren- 
tice or craftsman’s son frequently looks forward to 
embodying his dreams in the founding of some build- 
ing. Cromwell in Thomas Lord Cromwell, 1602, the 
young son of a Putney blacksmith, is conscious of 
future greatness: 


I’ll build a palace where this cottage stands, 
As fine as is King Henry’s house at Sheen.*’ 


William Rowley’s New Wonder, or A Woman Never 
Vexed, pr. 1632, deals with the foundation in 1197 by 
Walter Brune, a merchant, of the Hospital of Our 
Lady ; and with the enlarging and bettering of Ludgate 
Prison in the 15th century by Stephen Foster, the 
mayor (son of a fishmonger), and Agnes, his wife. 
Abounding in absurdities and anachronisms, the play 
is interesting as illustrative of the pomp that attended 
any civic institution. 

Two plays that deal with Thomas Gresham, grocer, 
the founder of the Royal Exchange, are Byrsa 
Basilica,18 a Latin play written by J. Rickets in 1570; 
and Thomas Heywood’s If You Know Not Me, You 
Know Nobody, Part 2, 1606. The latter portrays 
Gresham as a typical self-made man between whom 
and the nobly born man there is an enmity. Vicis- 
situdes of the speculator are well represented here. 

One day Gresham and his friends are caught in a 
storm. The inconvenience caused him calls to his mind 

a ERC Ly (BCs ges 


78 A description of the play is in Jahrbuch der Deutschen 
Shakespeare Gesellschaft, vol. 34, p. 281. 


THE ARTISAN AS SPECULATOR AND PHILANTHROPIST 37 


the desirability of having a roofed exchange for mer- 
chants to transact business in; he resolves that he shall 
establish such a one. In a sentimental manner, Hey- 
wood describes how Gresham and his friends are 
shown pictures of charitable citizens, merchants and 
craftsmen, such as Sir John Allen, Sir Richard Whit- 
tington, mercers who benefited their country in various 
ways. Gresham and his friends are moved to tears of 
admiration, and Gresham fervently declares that he 
will build an Exchange, so that he will be remembered 
after death. The building is finally erected with much 
ceremony and pomp. Gresham, the Mayor, and sheriffs 
lay gold on top of the first bricks. The queen herself 
and the ambassadors are entertained by Gresham." 
She calls the place the Royal Exchange and knights 
Gresham. 


Gresham is throughout the play a strange combina- 
tion of altruism and worldliness; he is utilitarian, is 
interested in useful trades and pursuits, but his in- 
dustry has as its goal the placing of him in the public 
view. On thinking of the future craftsmen who will 
transact business in the Exchange, he says: 


Some shall prove masters, and speak in Gresham’s praise, 
In Gresham’s work we did our fortunes raise.’° 


Certain plays that deal with craftsmen becoming 
local Mayors are The Mayor of Quinborough, of 
uncertain date and authorship (perhaps largely by 
Middleton), which tells how the witty tanner, Simon, 
becomes Mayor of Quinborough ; and Anthony Brewer’s 


18 Heywood follows Stow’s description. Annals, p. 1131, the 
companies in their liveries await the Queen’s progress. 


2° Shakespeare Soc. Pub., vol. 6, p. 107, 1. 10-12. 


38 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


Love-Sick King, 1605.71: The latter play, like many in 
its class, has a number of improbabilities and anachro- 
nisms. It pictures a poor Newcastle peddler, whose 
sole possessions are needles and a lambs-skin, selling 
his lambs-skin for a groat, investing the latter in a 
commodity of iron ore which later turns out to be an 
ore of gold. With his wealth, Thornton builds a wail, 
a hundred feet high and twelve in breadth, around 
Newcastle, and reédifies Allhallows Church. 

This play should be considered together with a lost 
play, The History of Richard Whittington, 1605, deal- 
ing with a historical character and one far more cele- 
brated as a popular hero than Thornton. 

According to popular stories”? and a charming ballad, 
Sir Richard Whittington’s Advancement, the main 
facts of Whittington’s life are ag follows: He is a 
poor boy”? of Lancashire who is taken by a London 
mercer to serve him as a scullion. Disgusted with his 
low estate he runs away, but the London bells give 
him heart again: 

London’s bells sweetly rung 

Whittington’s back return; 

Evermore sounding so, 

Turn again, Whittington; 

For thou, in time, shall grow 

Lord Mayor of London.** 
So he returns to his apprenticeship. The master is 
about to sail away to speculate with his merchandise. 
Whittington “‘ventures” his sole possession, a cat, on 

*1 Edited by A. E. H. Swaen. 

°* Variants of the story will not be considered here. 

°° He was of well-to-do parents, bound apprentice to a mercer, 
the mercers being the foremost of the twelve great companies. 


** From the ballad, The History of Sir Richard Whittington’s 
Advancement. It is in Percy Socy. Pubs., vol. 1. 


THE ARTISAN AS SPECULATOR AND PHILANTHROPIST 39 


this voyage. The cat is taken to a country which is 
badly troubled with rats and mice. The king, therefore, 
gives “heaps of gold” for the cat. Whittington becomes 
a speculating merchant, marries his master’s daughter, 
becomes sheriff, and three times Lord Mayor of Lon- 
don. He lends generously of his wealth to the king 
to carry on war in France, and is kind to poor people 
and widows. He founds Whittington College, and gives 
to Newgate Prison. 

The non-extant play, in all probability, took a similar 
form to the story just described, since dramatists tend 
to follow popular tradition rather than history. As- 
suming, then, that this was the general trend of the 
lost play, one may see several parallels between The 
Love-Sick King and The History of Richard Whit- 
tington. Each came poor, aS was popularly but er- 
roneously supposed, a stranger to a large town. There 
is in each an anticipation of future wealth and great- 
ness. Thornton’s whisperings in the ear correspond 
to the agreeably prophetic bells of the Whittington 
story. Each begins his speculation with a trifling 
article: Thornton with a lambs-skin, Whittington with 
a cat, objects which are afterward associated with 
their names. Thornton is ridiculed because of his 
humble lambs-skin, as Whittington very probably is 
because of his cat. Each becomes unexpectedly rich 
and eminent because of his peculiar venture. Each 
marries a relative of his former master. Each be- 
comes Mayor in the town of his prosperity, one in 
Newcastle, the other in London. Each remembers the 
poor, and contributes something to the nation and to 
individual poor people. Brewer apparently attempts, 
on the suggestion of the Whittington play, to arouse 


40 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


for Thornton an admiration equal to that long since 
held for Whittington.” 

On first considering these two treatments of enter- 
prising craftsmen and traders, one might consider 
that both should be relegated to the nursery with 
Cinderella, Puss in Boots, and similar specimens of 
fairy lore. But, however improbable they are, they 
may have a basis in possibility, as reflecting some 
typical Elizabethan merchant under the guise of a 
medieval one. The Elizabethan period is one which 
shows many vicissitudes in trade as well as in other 
kinds of fortune. A rich merchant might suddenly lose 
all he had; on the other hand, one with almost nothing 
might become successful. The original article ven- 
tured might be a cat, a lambs-skin, or almost anything. 
The story of Whittington’s cat is not wholly impossible, 
as cats were greatly in demand in some parts of the 
world. A possible explanation of the rumors in regard 
to the cat and the lambs-skin is that these commodities 
reaped a fair amount of profit for the speculators ; with 
that profit they made more, and gradually became rich. 
For the purpose of drama and ballad, however, it is 
more convenient to state that “heaps of gold” were 
given for a cat. 

The names of craftsmen were perpetual not only 
in the buildings that they contributed toward erecting, 
but also in certain verse epitaphs. One of the best of 
these is An Epitaph of Maister Frances Benison.*® His 
success as a haberdasher and philanthropist is com- 
mented on. 


*5 A number of these features of comparison have been men- 
tioned by Swaen in his edition of Brewer’s play. 

*° It is in Collmann’s Ballads and Broadsides, p. 79. Many 
other similar epitaphs are in this volume. 


THE ARTISAN AS SPECULATOR AND PHILANTHROPIST 41 


A combination of the craftsman’s interest in spec- 
tacular exhibitions and of his pride in civic distinctions 
is to be found in the Lord Mayor’s Show.?’ Devised, 
for the most part, by poets and dramatists in sym- 
pathy with craftsmen, these spectacles present the 
mayors rather as what they aspire to than as what 
they frequently are; as merchant-adventurers rather 
than as handicraftsmen. There is, then, much oppor- 
tunity for imaginative and poetic representation, a 
representation, which, because of the clumsy and in- 
congruous physical devices of these pageants, arouses 
much satire and burlesque on the part of later poets 
and dramatists. 


The Lord Mayor’s Show, celebrating the Mayor’s 
investiture in office, at its height in the reign of 
James I, is an outgrowth in the middle of the 16th 
century of the Midsummer Show.”® The following 
procedure, as outlined by Nathan Drake, is typical of 
all Lord Mayor Shows. 


On the day of St. Simon and St. Jude, October 28th, 
the Mayor, having been chosen from one of the twelve 
great livery companies, enters office. On the next day, 
October: 29th, he goes by barge decorated with the 
city’s arms, toward Westminster. Near him goes the 
Queen’s barge with the mayor’s arms on it. ‘Next 
before him” goes the barge of the livery of his own 
company and of some trading company, as the mer- 
chant-adventurers. Each company goes in order with 

?7 Collections of these shows are in F. W. Fairholt’s Lord 
Mayors’ Pageants, vol. 10 of the Percy Society Publications. 
Good criticisms of them are in R. Withington’s English Pag- 
eantry, 2 volumes. 


** The Midsummer Show was a pageantic ceremony, combin- 
ing religious allegory with folk-lore and civic celebration. 


42 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


its proper barge. The mercer’s company is always first, 
with its huge representation of the Virgin; this order 
is always kept, except that the company of which the 
mayor of that year is free is always second. The twelve 
companies are often used to represent pillars of the 
commonwealth or the twelve seasons. At Westminster, 
the mayor takes the oath of office, and then returns 
by water to Paul’s Wharf through Cheapside. They 
pass on horseback with pomp and music to Guildhall, 
where they dine. The new and old mayor ride on 
horseback, both in scarlet gowns, and the latter with 
a gold chain about his neck. Aldermen follow in two’s, 
all in scarlet; those who were former mayors wear 
gold chains.?° 

Beginning with 1585, the dramatists, especially 
Munday, Middleton, Dekker, and Heywood, become the 
writers of the poetry for the spectacles. Trade sym- 
bolism is frequently stressed; e. g., in Peele’s Decensus 
Astraeae, 1585, the mayor, who is a skinner, is dressed 
like a Moor and rides on a lynx. Certain trade proper- 
ties, such as the Golden Fleece for the drapers, the 
goldsmith’s forge for the goldsmiths, the Lemnian 
forge for the ironmongers, fur bearing animals for 
the skinners, and the Virgin for the mercers, become 
established. Certain stock personages proper to each 
company; i.e., formerly free of that company, and 
representing valor, industry, altruism, and nationalism, 
appear whenever that company has its mayoralty show. 
Of special interest in this connection are the heroic 
figures, Sir Francis Drake, England’s True Jason,°*° 


7° English Pageantry, vol. II, p. 18. 


°° The drapers’ Lord Mayor’s Show affords opportunities for 
introducing much imaginative poetry; e. g., in Heywood’s Porta 


THE ARTISAN AS SPECULATOR AND PHILANTHROPIST 43 


Sir John Hawkwood, and Sir William Walworth, free 
of the drapers’, tailors’, and fishmongers’ company 
respectively.*? 

Inasmuch as the Lord Mayor’s Show was stereotyped, 
for the most part, the subject may be best treated by 
considering with some care one of the best and most 
representative of the Lord Mayor’s Shows; i. e., Dek- 
ker’s London’s Tempe, 1629.*2 In this work, which was 
written in 1629 for the Honorable James Campbell, 
mayor and ironmonger, there is much emphasis on the 
craft and its commercial significance. Dekker unites. 
the charm and fascination in constructive labor with. 
the more popular poetic presentation of a craft’s world- 
wide significance and importance. The glory and ro- 
mance of the merchant-adventurers are also introduced.. 

Dekker begins by giving some history of the Lord 
Mayor’s Show. There follows a water show, presentinz 
Oceanus, crowned, in a silver scallop shell drawn by 
two sea-horses. He glorifies the Thames and London: 

New Troy’s towers on tiptoe rize 

To hit heaven’s roofe. 
The second show presents a sea on which is a sea-lion,. 
because it is one of the supporters of the East India 
Company, of which the Mayor is free. Tethys rides. 
on the lion. The third show presents an estridge biting 
a horseshoe. 


Pietatis, 1638, there is the following praise of the sheep: 


Of patience, and of profit th’ emblem is, 
In former ages by the heroes sought; 
After from Greece into Hesperia brought; 
She’s cloth’d in plenteous riches, and being shorne, 
Her fleece an order and by emperours worne. 
321 Hawkwood and Walworth have been already discussed in: 
Johnson’s Nine Worthies of London. 
#2 Percy Socy. Pubs., vol. 10, The Lord Mayor’s Pageant. 


44 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


The fourth show is the most interesting to us, be- 
cause of its bearing on the ironmongers’ trade and 
work. It presents the Lemnian forge at which are 
Vulcan, the smith, and his servans, the Cyclopes, work- 
ing on the anvils. The smiths sing to the sounding of 
the anvil in praise of iron: 


Brave iron, brave hammer, from your sound, 
The art of musicke has her ground; 

On the anvile thou keep’st time, 

Thy knick-a-knock is a smithes best chyme. 


! Yet thwick-a-thwack, 
Thwick, thwacka-thwack, thwack, 
Make our brawny sinews crack, 
Then pit-a-pat pat, pit-a-pat, 
Till thickest barres be beaten flat. 


We shooe the horses of the sunne, 

Harness the dragons of the moone, 

Forge Cupid’s quiver, bow and arrowes, 

And our dame’s coach that’s drawn with sparrowes. 
Till thwick-a-thwack, etc.** 


The passage has onomatopoetic value, suggesting by 
its sound the hammering on the anvil. The manifold 
uses of iron are also mentioned: it is used in the manu- 
facture of implements of war, ships, bulwarks, fur- 
naées, and tools for practically all trades. The dialogue 
between Jove and Vulcan, though undramatic, is in- 
teresting on account of its praise of iron: 


58 Cf. Whittier’s Shoemakers. 


“Rap, rap! upon the well worn stone 
How falls the polished hammer! 

Rap, rap! the measured sound has grown 
A quick and merry clamor.” 


In Jordan’s The Cheaters Cheated, are lines on ironmongers. 


THE ARTISAN AS SPECULATOR AND PHILANTHROPIST 45 


Iron, best of metals, pride of minerals. 

Hart of the earth, hand of the world, which fals 
Heavy when it strikes home. By iron’s strong charmes 
Ryots lye bound. Warre stops her rough allarmes. 
Iron, earthquakes strikes in foes; knits friends in love; 
Iron’s that mainehinge on which the world doth move; 
No kingdomes globe can turne, even, smooth and round, 
But that his axletree in iron is found; 

For armies wanting iron are puffes of wind, 

And but for iron, who, thrones of peace would mind?** 


The imitative and the childish tendencies of artisans 
have frequently been mentioned. The spectacle of the 
Lord Mayor’s Show, therefore, played a large part in 
the imagination of artisans and citizens, and may have 
had an influence on their love of acting and mimicry. 
The mayor, with gold chain®* and scarlet robe, on horse- 
back, the procession, the spectacles, and the homage 
paid to former greatness lingered in the imagination 
of the bourgeois class, especially the craftsmen’s wives 
and apprentices. Each apprentice with ambition cher- 
ished the dim possibility that he would become, in the 
indefinite future, Lord Mayor. The homage paid, how- 
ever, was chiefly to the outward ceremonies (the aver- 
age craftsman regarding the Mayor and aldermen as 
a boy does a procession of soldiers) and was inclined 


*¢ Cf. Whittier’s Shipbuilders. 


“Up,- Up,- in nobler toil than ours 
No craftsmen bear a part; 
We make of nature’s giant powers 
The slaves of human art.” 


*5 Interest in material representations of grandeur and great- 
ness are also manifested in Murley, the brewer, in Drayton and 
Munday’s Sir John Oldcastle. He is prevailed on, through the 
promise of knighthood, to give freely of his wealth. The golden 
spurs which represented knighthood are fondled by him as toys 
would be by a child. 


46 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


to disregard the trying and responsible nature of the 
office. 

Such a highly spectacular and bombastic cere- 
mony was naturally subject to ridicule and burlesque. 
Beaumont and Fletcher’s Knight of the Burning Pestle 
ridicules the love of craftsmen for pomp and glory. 
The Lord Mayor’s Show and its clumsy wooden repre- 
sentations are ridiculed in Shirley’s A Contention for 
Honor and Riches, 1633, and Honoria and Mammon, 
1652. Several ballads; e. g., Oh, London is a fine Town, 
describe the clumsy imitations of nobility on the part 
of craftsmen. 

As a conclusion, the Lord Mayor’s Show may be said 
to be a very old ceremony, and one that still exists in 
certain sections of the world. Although it is true that 
each company vaunted itself over all others in its Lord 
Mayor’s Show, nevertheless, co-operation and mutual 
support on the part of all the companies, especially of 
the twelve great ones, were stressed. Extravagant and 
spectacular to the extreme, the Lord Mayor’s Show 
had, nevertheless, a place in art; and, in its insistence 
on justice, fraternity, co-operation, industry, and pa- 
triotism, it upheld the original idea and purpose of the 
guild system. 


CHAPTER iit 
THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 


Before considering craftsmen at work it will be 
interesting to discuss a few charming ballads in which 
they appear. Two fantastic ballads are The Merry 
Pranks of Robin Goodfellow,’ Robin Goodfellow being 
a fairy apprentice to a tailor; and The Miller and 
the King’s Daughter.2. We shall discuss Elizabethan 
ballads far more realistic than these which still border 
on folklore, though to a lesser extent than medieval 
ballads do. They present sovereigns traveling incog- 
nito, like Haroun Alraschid, among citizens. These 
ballads have a fresh, out-of-door atmosphere. They 
deal with the advancement of craftsmen, and their 
favorite theme; i.e., that of being associated with 
royalty. The advancement of these craftsmen is not 
dependent on any artistic skill or initiative on their 
part, but on sheer good fortune; hence these ballads 
differ from that on Whittington. 

King James I and the Tinker? was apparently written 
during the reign of James I. The mender of kettles 
and lover of ale meets the king whom he does not 
know; they drink healths to each other. The tinker 
expresses his desire to see the king, who is hunting 
on the border. He is greatly surprised to find that this 

* Percy Socy. Pub., vol. 2. 

? Jamieson’s Popular Ballads and Songs, vol. 1, p. 315. 


* Percy Socy. Pub., vol. 17, p. 109. 
AT 


48 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


stranger is the king. The sovereign is so pleased with 
the tinker that he gives him money and land, and 
knights him. The tinker’s pride in his craft is ex- 
pressed in the last stanza: 


Sir John of the Dale he has land, he has fee, 
At the court of the king who so happy as he? 
Yet still in his Hall hangs the tinker’s old sack, 
And the budget of tools which he bore at his back. 


Several charming ballads deal with millers and 
present them as substantial and prosperous citizens. 
An instance is The Miller in his best array.‘ It presents 
a prosperous miller who rides singing to Manchester 
to woo a baker’s daughter. The other suitors from the 
artisan ranks, however, are delineated somewhat better 
than the miller. Thus, the glover borders his gloves 
with bleeding hearts pierced with darts. The butcher 
woos her, but she is afraid that he may dress her as 
he does a calf. The tailor woos her, promising her rich 
clothing and strange fashions. The miller wins her by 
talking of his wealth and mill, but especially by teach- 
ing her “to daunce a downe.” 

Two companion ballads make interesting illustrations 
of this type, and present variety in characterization. . 
These are: A pleasant new Ballad of the Miller of 
Mansfield in Sherwood and of King Henry the Seconde® 
and A Merry Ballad of the Miller and King Henry the 
second.® Neither of these Elizabethan ballads has rela- 
tion to actual history; it is hardly conceivable that an 
aristocratic Norman king could fraternize, as the one 
in the ballad does, with a miller. The first ballad 


* Shirburn Ballads, p. 116. * Shirburn Ballads, p. 216. 
* Shirburn Ballads, p. 311. 


THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 49 


tells how the king, after hunting in Sherwood Forest, 
is feasted by a miller and his wife, though unknown 
to them. The second describes how the king rewards 
the miller’s hospitality by inviting him and his family 
to court. 

There is still another craftsman about whom and 
his associations with a king several stories and ballads 
were concerned; i.e., the tanner of Tamworth. His 
story somewhat resembles those just narrated of the 
tinker and the miller and their friendship with kings.’ 
In one respect, however, the Elizabethan ballad to be 
described is of far more importance for our study; it 
skillfully delineates the tanner as such. It is, therefore, 
the first of these ballads just considered to fuse ro- 
manticism with realism. 


A merye, pleasant and delectable history between 
kinge Edward IV, and a Tanner of Tamworth, 1600,° 
depicts in Part 1 a well dressed and prosperous tanner, 
a member of one of the richer crafts. He is on horse- 
back, wearing a good russet coat and sitting on a 
cowhide. He meets the King in hunting attire who 
asks the way to Drayton Basset. The surly tanner will 


7 Besides these ballads, Heywood’s King Edward IV treats 
the figure. 

® Arber’s Stationers’ Register, vol. 8, p. 173; Roxburghe Bal- 
lads, vol. 2, p. 168. It is in two parts. 

The King and the Barker (Ritson’s Pieces of ancient popular 
poetry, p. 61) is a medieval ballad describing a gruff tanner 
or barker who meets the king and thinks that the latter is a 
highwayman. However, they exchange horses, and the tanner is 
thrown from the horse. A final reconciliation results. 

King Henry IV and the Tanner of Tamworth, 1564 (Stationers’ 
Register, vol. 2, p. 338) and King Edward IV and the Tanner 
of Tamworth, 1586 (Stationers’ Register, vol. 2, p. 45), are 
apparently on the same theme. 

The Tanner of Tamworth also appears in Heywood’s play, 
King Edward IV. 


50 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


not direct him, and rudely refuses the king’s invitation 
to a dinner, stating that he has more groats with him 
than the stranger has. Moreover, he takes the king 
for a thief who has stolen the lordly attire that he 
wears, and is perhaps trying to steal the tanner’s valu- 
able cowhide. 

The second part describes how the king exchanges 
his steed for the tanner’s mare, the tanner not forget- 
ting, however (since he is suspicious of the king), to 
transfer his valuable cowhide to the steed that he is 
about to mount. After the tanner has seated himself 
on the back of the king’s steed, the latter is so fright- 
ened by the black horns and black tail of the cowhide 
which he carries that he runs away with the tanner. 
The latter is heavily thrown, but soon recovers, to be 
dismayed at the five hundred lords and knights that 
have obeyed the summons of the king’s bugle. Again 
he shows the. zealous craftsman’s interest in his work 
by fearing that they are all thieves who have come to 
steal his cowhide. 

The king, revealing himself to the tanner, is so 
pleased with the amusement that the latter has caused 
him that he gives him Plumpton Parke, three tene- 
ments, and five hundred pounds a year “‘to maintaine 
thy good cowhide.”’ The tanner thanks him, saying: 


If ever thou comest to merry Tamworth, 
thou shalt have clouting leather for thy shone. 


We have in this ballad, then, a good portrait of a 
substantial tanner, proud of his trade, whose precious 
cowhide is the direct cause of the humorous accident 
which he suffers. , 

In considering realistic descriptions of manual 


THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 51 


workers in poetry, one cannot afford to overlook a 
vivid presentation by Spenser of smelters. Spenser, 
it is true, was little concerned with craftsmen, nor 
are smelters to be strictly considered artists or crafts- 
men ; but the varied appeal of the following description 
of the workers in Mammon’s cave to sight and feeling 
is hardly excelled by any other description of labor: 


And every feend his busie paines applyde 
To melt the golden metall, ready to be tryde. 


One with great bellows gathered filling ayre, 

And with forst wind the fewell did inflame; 
Another did the dying bronds repayre 

With yron tongs, and sprinckled ofte the same 
With liquid waves, fiers Vulcans rage to tame, 
Who, maystring them, renewd his former heat: 
Some scumd the drosse that from the metall came; 
Some stird the molten owre with ladles great: 

And every one did swincke, and every one did sweat.’ 


The verse description of Jack of Newbury’s work- 
shop anticipates the modern factory system. In a large 
room two hundred men are each working at a loom. 
A boy is beside each man, making quills on which the 
weavers wind the thread which forms the woof of 
cloth. A hundred singing’ women card or comb the 
wool. In another room two hundred girls are spinning 
and singing. A hundred and fifty poor children separate 
the coarse from the fine wool. Fifty shearmen clip the 
nap from the cloth. There are eighty rowers, whose 
task is to roughen the cloth. Forty men work in a 
dye-house and twenty in a fulling mill.?° 

® Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Book 2, Canto 7, part of stanza 


35 and stanza 36. 
7° Cleansing and thickening are done in the fulling mill. 


52 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


The weavers’. song represents the cheerful atmos- 
phere of the shop. The singers look back to a golden 
age in which great heroes like Hercules were spinners, 
in which princes were shepherds and queens were 
bakers, and in which concord abounded but envy did 
not exist. Following is a stanza of the song. 


When Hercules did use to spin, 
And Pallas wrought upon the loome, 
Then Love and Friendship did agree 
To keep the bands of amity. 


King Henry VIII who is visiting Jack’s establishment, 
is presented by the workmen with a gilt beehive and 
golden bees!! to represent a commonwealth and its 
industrious artisans. The king is greatly pleased with 
Jack’s industrial system. 

In Thomas of Reading the clothiers are not described 
at work, but Cole’s substantiality is evident. He has 
a hundred men servants and forty maids, several hun- 
dred spinners and carders. 

' An interesting inventory of the shoemakers’ tools, 
given in Deloney’s Gentle Craft, Part 1, deserves a few 
words of introduction, as it is associated with a tradi- 
tion dear to the shoemakers’ guild. Hugh, a Welsh 
prince and shoemaker’s apprentice, becomes a religious 
martyr. His fellow shoemakers visit and comfort him 
in prison; he expresses his gratitude toward their 
chivalry and kindliness by singing a song in their 
honor, and calling them the Gentle Craft. The shoe- 
makers regard him as a saint, and after his martyr- 
dom make their tools out of his bones, this being the 
** The simile of the commonwealth and the bees is also in 


Hobbes’ Leviathan and Shakespeare’s Henry V, not to mention 
other parallels, outside of our period. 


THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 53 


hypothetical origin of the expression, “St. Hugh’s 
bones,” as applied to the tools on the back of a journey- 
man shoemaker. The words of the shoemakers are as 
follows: 


And mark what St. Hughe’s bones shall be: 

First a drawer and a dresser; 

Two wedges, a more and a lesser; 

A pretty block three inches high, 

In fashion squared like a die, 

Which shall be called by proper name 

A heel-block; the very same, 

A hand-leather, and a thumb-leather likewise, 

To pull our shoo-thread, we must devise; 

The needle and the thimble shall not be left alone, 

The pincers and the pricking-aule, and the rubbing-stone; 
The aule-steele and tackes, the sow-haires beside, 

The stirrop, holding fast while we sowe the cowhide; 
The whetstone, the stopping-stick, and the paring-knife— 
All this doth belong to a journeyman’s life. 

Our apron is the shrine to wrap these bones in: 

Thus shrowd we Saint Hugh in gentle lamb’s skin.*? 


Several ballads enter, to some extent, into a humor- 
ous description of the making of beer. Instances are 
Allan O’Maut,® John Barleycorn,* and A Pleasant New 
Ballad of the Bloody Murther of Sir John Barley- 
Corn. 

The last of these will serve as an illustration. 
Barleycorn is ploughed, but revives after rain. He is 
then cut down and bound like a thief. After being 
stacked and beaten until the flesh falls from his bones, 
he is fanned and sifted, steeped in a vat, dried over 

12 Deloney’s The Gentle Craft, Part 1, chap. 4. 

18 Jamieson’s Popular Ballads and Songs, vol. 2, p. 237. 


14 Jamieson’s Popular Ballads and Songs, vol. 2, p. 240. 
16 Jamieson’s Popular Ballads and Songs, vol. 2, p. 251. 


54 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


a fire, ground in a mill, and boiled in a vat. He is 
finally stored in a barrel, and his blood drawn out 
through a tap. 

In a few dramatic works, artisans are well delineated 
as workers. Unfortunately, though the drama is rich 
in photographic sketches of dishonest and disagreeable 
tradesfolk in their shops (in the plays especially of 
Middleton and the later ones of Dekker), we have very 
few plays besides Dekker’s Shoemakers’ Holiday and 
Rowley’s A Shoemaker a Gentleman that skillfully 
interweave romance of pure and youthful love with 
the joy in craftsmanship. 

These two important plays will now be considered, 
together with others that combine, to some extent, the 
romantic plot with the craft element. Dekker’s The 
Shoemakers’ Holiday, 1599, has already been considered 
from one viewpoint; i.e., that of the self-made man. 
A brief summary of the play will be given. 

One plot is concerned with the love of Lacy, the 
thriftless Earl of Lincoln’s son, for Rose, the daughter 
of the Lord Mayor of London. The two fathers are 
anxious to prevent such union of noble with base blood. 
Lacy is sent to fight against France, but remains in 
London disguised as a Dutch journeyman shoemaker, 
being finally hired by Simon Eyre. 

The other plot deals with Eyre and his journeymen 
shoemakers. Ralph, one of these, is pressed for the 
war against France. He is not diffident himself about 
going to war, but Eyre and the other journeymen 
clamor at the thought that they shall lose so good a 
workman, and that Ralph’s wife will be unsupported. 
Ralph, departing, gives his wife, Jane, a pair of shoes 
cut out by Hodge, stitched by Firke, seamed by him- 


THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 535) 


self, which he says he will always know from other 
shoes.?¢ 


The play abounds in humor and merriment. Dame 
Margery, Eyre’s wife, constantly finds fault with the 
servants. Her imitation of fashionable people is vividly 
portrayed.’ Lacy, singing in Dutch, is hired by Eyre, 
who is persuaded to do this by the journeymen. The 
latter wish to have such an amusing fellow to help 
the passing away of working hours. He furnishes 
amusement for them all, joins in their morris dance, 
in which he is discovered by Rose as he dances with 
other shoemakers. Later on, the father of Rose dis- 
covers her with Lacy. Rose, that the situation may 
be explained to her father, persuades Lacy to pretend 
that he is trying a pair of shoes on her, a ruse which 
succeeds.’ The Mayor is greatly disgusted when he 
finds that his daughter has run off with a shoemaker. 

The pathetic part, which somewhat resembles the 
Enoch Arden story, is concerned with Ralph and Jane. 
Jane is obliged to work in a sempster’s shop, for, as 
Eyre had said to her on her husband’s departure for 
war, “these prettie fingers must spin, must card, must 
worke.”’ As she works, she is wooed by a citizen, 
Hammon, whom, though loving, she rejects, inasmuch 
as her husband may still be alive. His suit is well 
portrayed, although it may have too much sentiment. 
Moreover, the atmosphere of the shop is vividly pre- 

76 This is a beautiful dramatic touch; the shoes form a symbol 
of Ralph and Jane’s union. It is to the credit of the play that 
the incident is made so vivid and introduced so early. 

17 She will be considered in the passage with aspiring crafts- 
women. 

18 It is strange that the idea occurs to her and not to him. 


Shoemaking was actually Lacy’s trade once, when he was travel- 
ing in Wittenberg. 


56 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


sented; the progress of his suit is worked in with the 
details of her work: 


HAM. How prettily she workes, oh prettie hand! 
Oh happie worke..... 
JANE. Sir, what ist you buy? 
What ist you lacke sir? callico, or lawne, 
Fine cambricke shirts, or bands, what will you buy? 
HAM. That which thou wilt not sell, faith yet Ile trie: 
How do you sell this handkercher? 
JANE. Good cheape. 
Ham. And how these ruffles? 
JANE. Cheape too. 
HAM. All cheape, how sell you then this hand? 
JANE. My hands are not to be sold. 
Ham. To be given then, nay faith I come to buy. 
JANE. But none knowes when. 


ececeeeveveeveeeeveeeree ec eevee e@ 


Ham. Looke how you wound this cloth, so you wound me.** 


By a false report that her Ralph was one of the soldiers 
killed in France, Jane is misled into consenting to 
marry Hammon. 


Meanwhile, Ralph returns for war, lame, friendless, 
penniless, and homeless. The shoemakers, his comrades, 
welcome him back to his old work, but can give him 
no information as to the whereabouts of his wife. He 
receives, later, an order to make a pair of shoes on 
a certain model for a lady who is to be married shortly. 
The model consists of one of the shoes that Ralph had 
given his wife on leaving for war. He instantly rec- 
ognizes the shoe: 

7° 1873 ed. of Dekker’s Dramatic Works, vol. 1, p. 46. This 
courting somewhat reminds one of the poetic epistle of Drayton 
in which Shore, a goldsmith, shows King Edward IV all of his 


choice jewels for sale; but the fairest of all the jewels in the 
shop, his wife, Jane, is not for sale. 


THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 57 


this shoe I durst be sworne 
Once covered the instep of my Jane: 
This is her size, her breadth, thus trod my love, 
These true-love knots I prickt, I hold my life, 
But this old shooe I shall find out my wife.’° 


He gains the promise of the assistance of his fellow- 
journeymen. When he tries on the shoes for his wife, 
she does not recognize him; travel and lameness have 
changed him. But since he resembles Ralph, she gives 
him gold for Ralph’s sake. 

The journeymen shoemakers, armed with clubs, take 
Jane from Hammon and restore her to Ralph. Firk, 
the mischief-lover, to furnish further amusement, 
arranges it so that the Lord Mayor mistakes Ralph 
and Jane for the Dutch shoemaker and Rose, an error 
which protracts the comedy somewhat. 

Something should be said about the excellent charac- 
terization of the craftsmen. Eyre and his three jour- 
neymen are all delineated as shoemakers, but each is 
differentiated from the others. Eyre is the bustling, 
energetic, humorous, but perfectly calm person, who, 
as he himself says, feels as young and hearty at fifty-six 
as he felt many years before. He has won and kept 
the good will of his workmen who are elated at his 
success and appointment as Mayor. Ralph is the seri- 
ous, hard-working man, evidently a skilled artisan 
from what the others say about him. Hodge, who is 
made master of the shop after Eyre has become Mayor, 
has a vision of becoming Mayor, or Alderman, at least, 
in the future. Firk is the most interesting of the jour- 
neymen; he has a ready wit. True to its genre, the 


2° Page 54. 


58 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


play presents his wit in form of terms most pertinent 
to a craftsman: 


they shall be married together by 
this rush, or else turn Firk to a fir- 
kin of butter to tan leather withall. 

They shall be knit like a paire 
of stockings in matrimony.’’* 


Firk is conscious of his own rank, that of second jour- 
neyman, and vies with Hodge in making shoes for great 
ones, such as court ladies.22 The base work; i.e., the 
making of shoes for ordinary people, is given to Hans, 
the new journeyman. Firk is somewhat vexed at the 
fact that he, the elder journeyman, is called to break- 
fast after Hans, the new one. 

The Shoemakers’ Holiday is a composite of all the 
most pleasing forms of literature on the crafts. There 
is the old spirit of fraternity, illustrated in the jour- 
neymen’s work in the shop, and in their united resolve 
to help Ralph recover his wife. There is also the charm- 
ing poetry of contentment in fellowship and mutual 
labor; e. g., Second Three Men’s Song, part of which 
is as follows: 


Cold’s the wind, and wet’s the rain, 
Saint Hugh be our good speed, 

Ill is the weather that bringeth no gain, 
Nor helps good hearts in need. 


Trowl the bowl, the jolly nut-brown bowl, 
And here, kind mate, to thee; 


*? Pages 59, 60. : 


*? Something that is emphasized in literature is the love that 
craftsmen had of being associated with royalty or eminence, 
either in the way of working for such high classes, or gaining 
even a slight recognition from such, a nod from an earl or a king. 


THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 59 


Let’s sing a dirge for Saint Hugh’s soul, 
And down it merrily.’® 


Eyre’s speech to Ralph, departing for war, touches on 
the chivalric stories of craftsmen, and especially of 
shoemakers in wars. There are technical details of the 
craft, and frequent references to tools, such as stirrop, 
heele-block, etc. The industrious and enterprising 
craftsman is presented in the person of Simon Eyre. 
Pathos is in the story of Ralph and Jane, and romantic 
charm in this, in the Lacy-Rose story, and in the deer 
hunt and morris dance. There is also a touch of satire 
in Dame Margery’s affectations, an anticipation of a 
favorite later type of city wife. There are many highly 
individualized tradesfolk. In short, the play portrays 
charmingly the life, with its various joys and sorrows. 
of the craftsman and craftswoman. 

William Rowley’s A Shoemaker a Gentleman,** 1609, 
is almost as valuable a contribution to this genre as 
is Dekker’s play. Sources for the play are the first 
two tales of the first part of Deloney’s Gentle Craft. 
The battle scenes are stirring and vivid, but highly 
extravagant; the scenes of martyrdom are affected. 
Both these series of incidents are important, however, 
as they appertain to ancient traditions of the Gentle 
Craft. The battle scenes, including Crispianus’ noble 
conduct in battle, and the religious element have al- 
ready been discussed. 

Like Dekker, Rowley is more skillful in depicting 
shop scenes than in describing wild and improbable 

28 Dekker’s Shoemakers’ Holiday. Its position in the play ha; 
not been found with certainty; it is sometimes given in Act 5, 
se. 4. This might be compared with Martin Parker’s ballad, I'he 


Three merry Cobblers, Roxburghe Ballad Socy., vol. 2, p. 586. 
*4 C. W. Stork, William Rowley. 


60 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


adventures. His art in The Shoemaker a Gentleman 
is in the realistic treatment of the various characters 
at their work as shoemakers, of their zest and joy in 
their work, and of the romantic plot which is skillfully 
interwoven with the shop scenes. 

The sons of the British king, under the names of 
Crispinus and Crispianus become apprenticed to a 
shoemaker for a term of seven years. The shoemaker 
is a respectable, quiet man, with a great fondness for 
using (or just as often misusing) big words. His wife, 
Sisly, is a loud-spoken woman, a ruler of her husband, 
and, taken all in all, she is something of a scold. As 
in The Shoemakers’ Holiday, so here also the shoe- 
maker and his wife present certain contrasts to one 
another. With all her faults, however, she is a good 
worker. She spins the thread for the journeymen, 
Ralph and Barnaby. They jest and sing in the mean- 
time. Sisly: ‘‘Thou seest I am at defiance with my 
worke till it be done, for I am alwaies spitting on my 
toe.”’ She is probably here using her foot to fasten 
the thread.2> The journeymen, Ralph and Barnaby, 
are glad to have Crispinus and Crispianus employed, 
as their fair faces will draw the custom of pretty 
wenches. An afternoon holiday is given in favor of 
the two new apprentices. The shoemaker expresses 
further his spirit of fellowship by saying: 


Provide dinner, Sis, Master, journimen, and Prentises, 
one table serves for all; wee feed as all fellowes.”*® 


Crispinus and Barnaby go to the home of Leodice, 
the emperor’s daughter, to fit her with shoes. She 
takes an interest in Crispinus, but hesitates to love 


26 Page 177, lines 11-12. °* Act 1, sc. 2, p. 183, line 185, 


THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 61 


him on account of his low birth. At all events, she 
pretends that her shoes do not fit, simply that she may 
have a chance of seeing Crispinus again. Her nurse, 
a figure like the nurse in Romeo and Juliet, tells her 
that several of Leodice’s own relatives were craftsmen. 
This information satisfies her, and when Crispinus 
reappears with her shoes she prepares to woo him. 
She first pretends to find fault with him for courting 
her nurse. Then, in what she pretends is a magic glass, 
but which is only a mirror, she shows him his future 
wife; i.e., herself. He tells her of his high birth, and 
they agree to marry secretly the next day.’ 

Meanwhile, an officer comes to the shoemaker’s 
shop to press the journeymen and apprentices for war 
against the Vandals. Barnaby pretends that he has 
an ulcer about the heart, and is thus unfit for war,”® 
but the noble blood of Crispianus asserts itself, and 
he is desirous of going to war. He goes, therefore, 
greatly to the sorrow of the shoemaker’s wife, who has 
a great affection for him. 


Crispinus, returning, gives a false excuse for his 
lateness, saying that he stayed at court all night, fear- 
ing he would be drafted. The wife hits upon the real 
cause of his tardiness, and scolds him for it. Her rage 
increases when, later on, Crispinus tells her that his 
wife is going to give birth to a child. There follows 
a lively and humorous scene”? in which the shoemaker 


*7 Act 2, sc. 3. The scene is an excellent one. 


?8 Barnaby’s reflection on the advantages of remaining home 
in safety resembles the famous soliloquy of Falstaff in Henry IV, 
Part I, in which he claims that discretion is the better part 
of valor. 


racy. 4, se. 1. 


62 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


tries to appease his raging wife. On Crispinus’ telling 
her that he is of noble blood, she is quieted: 


I ever thought they were some worshipfull mans 
sonnes, they were such mannerly boys still.*° 


Sisly persuades them to set fire to the houses in the 
neighborhood so that public attention may be engaged 
while Leodice is brought secretly into her house. 
Leodice gives birth to a boy, who, as Crispianus says, 
shall 


plant a whole race of kings. 
Nor shall he scorne, till that race be runne, 
To call himself a Prince, yet a Shoemaker’s sonne.** 


The shoemakers in livery, with attendant music, usher 
in the princess and her child. Barnaby’s request that 
the shoemakers may have a holiday each year on the 
25th of October, is granted. Crispianus is made British 
king in the South, Crispinus in the North. The latter 
builds a church to St. Alban, the first British martyr. 
The play is especially valuable, as before said, for 
its realistic shop scenes, its careful attention to details 
as to characters, tools, processes in the work of the 
craft.*? To a far greater extent than any play of the 
period it introduces craftsmen’s tools, such as stirrup, 
awl, etc.** In its lively shop scenes and in its depiction 
of fellowship and fraternity in the Hugh episode, and 
in its realism, it compares well with Dekker’s play. 
The play can hardly be said to establish the valor 
of shoemakers in battle, however. The shoemaker, 
8° Line 254, 5. a3" Act Byrseria: 
°* In this respect it resembles The Shoemakers’ Holiday. 


°° A stirrup is an instrument used to put over the knee and 
under the foot to hold work tight upon the knee. 


THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 63 


enthusiastic over Crispianus’ warlike exploits, which 
seem a credit to his craft, does not consider the fact 
that the bravery exhibited is by a prince, not by the 
genuine shoemaker, Barnaby, who is brave only in 
leading the shoemakers to fight with staves when he 
is fairly certain that no more fighting is needed. 

These two plays on the Gentle Craft illustrate what 
excellent products issued when Deloney’s tales were in 
large measure the sources. We may, therefore, truly 
regret the loss of several plays, perhaps as realistic 
and charming as these two, one at least of which is 
based partly on Deloney’s Thomas of Reading. About 
1596 Haughton, Day, and perhaps Samuel Rowley col- 
laborated on The Six Yeomen of the West, a murder 
play.** Plays related to this one are the two parts of 
The Six Clothiers of the West, entered 1601. This was 
also a murder play, snd was written by Haughton, 
Hathway, and Wentworth Smith. There is also the 
second part of Tom Dough by Day and Haughton. All 
of these characters appear in Thomas of Reading; The 
Six Yeomen of the West was based on part of Deloney’s 
tale. Haughton’s art in comedy and in realistic pre- 
sentation of life is demonstrated in Englishmen for my 
Money. But that a play involving clothiers in which 
Haughton collaborated approaches the detail of the 
clothiers’ craft to the extent to which Dekker or Rowley 
treat that of the shoemakers’ craft, is doubtful, for 
Browne, a clothier, in Englishmen for my Money is 
not delineated with the least attention to his craft. 
Rawlins’ Rebellion, 1637, roughly follows in outline 
Rowley’s Shoemaker a Gentleman and is thus indirectly 
indebted to Deloney’s novel. 


34 Yeomen here are clothiers. 


64 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


Dekker’s Match me in London, printed 1631, is a 
play somewhat difficult to classify. It presents none 
of the zest in labor so characteristic of the two shoe- 
maker plays recently described; on the other hand, it 
pictures a tyrannical, lustful monarch, and his abduc- 
tion of a craftsman’s wife, thus utilizing a theme that 
became common. In its vivid presentation of shop 
scenes,*> in its romantic love story, interwoven in a 
manner similar to the treatment of the Ralph-Jane 
plot, in its idealization of the shoemaker, Bilbo, and 
in its accurate delineation of him and Cordolente as 
shoemakers, it deserves a place here. 

In Cordova there live two lovers, Cordolente and 
Tormiella. The latter’s father has arranged that she 
marry another; so the lovers, accompanied by the witty 
and friendly shoemaker, Bilbo, escape to Seville. Here 
Cordolente opens a shop with miscellaneous wares, 
millinery, garters, gloves, and girdles. Bilbo is a sales- 
man in the shop, but has not forgotten his old trade, 
for he says to the new apprentice, Lazarillo: 


there’s not any Diego that treads 
upon Spanish leather, goes more upright upon 
the soles of his conscience than our master does.*® 


Out of regard for Cordolente, Bilbo says that he has 
left his trade, in which he had men-servants and maid- 
servants under him ‘‘to weare a flat cap here and cry 
what doe you lacke.” 

Tormiella works in the shop, embroidering muffs for 
ladies, and selling articles. The King, disguised as a 
citizen, together with a lady, enters the shop, ostensibly 

*5 Vividness and detail are common to early and late plays 


on the crafts. 
86 Dekker’s Dramatic Works, 1873 ed., vol. 4, Act 2, p. 150. 


THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 65 


to buy a pair of gloves for a lady whom he claims has 
a hand the size of Tormiella’s. Therefore he has her 
try on a pair of gloves. Bilbo’s art as a salesman 
appears; he calls attention to the fine quality of the 
leather and the aroma of the gloves. There is a fore- 
shadowing of the king’s plot to abduct Tormiella in 
such expressions as: 


BILBO. You shall have all the ware open’d i’ the shop... 
but you shall be fitted. 


KING. It needs not: that which is ope’d already shall serve 
my turne.*’ 


Bilbo, trying to persuade them to buy certain articles 
which he claims are cheap for their quality, says: 

“T assure your worship, my master will be a looser 
by you.’ The King and lady lure Tormiella and the 
apprentice away, pretending that they want her to look 
at certain embroidery that they will employ her to 
work on. The apprentice is sent back to fetch a glove 
that the lady falsely says she dropped, and meanwhile 
Tormiella is abducted. 

The King tries in vain to make her his mistress. 
She is the object of the Queen’s jealousy and hatred, 
and has, on the whole, a wretched time at court. 

Cordolente comes to court, boldly asks for his wife, 
and mentions the abuses and tyrannies of rulers. As 
he gains nothing by this method, he determines to use 
a stratagem, disguises himself as a shoemaker, and 
fits his wife with shoes. She pretends not to recognize 
him at first; he leads up to an introduction by desir- 
ing that she accept him again for her shoemaker, as 
formerly (i.e., he identifies the office of shoemaker 


*" Page 156. ** Page 157. 


66 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


with that of husband). He is a poor shopkeeper ‘‘whose 
ware is taken up by the king.’’*® 


TorM. Ile not change 
Thee for a thousand Kings; there’s gold. 


Corp. I’me only taking instructions to make her a lower 
chopeene.*® She finds fault that she’s lifted too 
high.** 


The king is finally persuaded to restore Tormiella to 
her husband. 

Cobblers appear in a number of plays. Their business 
is mending, not making, shoes, and they are often con- 
sidered botchers; i.e., clumsy workmen.*? They are 
usually depicted in literature as cheerful and witty 
individuals; they are generally treated, especially in 
the early drama, with a sympathy kindred to that for 
the shoemakers. In Julius Caesar the cobbler is the 
only craftsman that has a ready wit and that puns 
on his craft. One source of the wit of cobblers lies in 
the fact that their tools and materials, as last, end, 
sole, awl, and mend have sounds that convey a physical 
and technical meaning and at the same time an abstract 
and general meaning. Such conditions readily lend 
themselves to puns. 

Another play, in which Dekker collaborated with 
Haughton and Chettle, was Patient Grissel, 1600. It 
comprises the well known medieval story, and artfully 
contrasts Grissel’s contentment as a helper to her 

°° Page 211. 

*° Chopeene is a high shoe worn by court ladies. 

*t The incident as a whole is somewhat reminiscent of the 
Ralph-Jane plot. 

* For example, in Rowley’s Shoemaker a Gentleman Barnaby 


explains the poor workmanship of Crispinus to Leodice by say- 
ing, ‘‘He’s but a cobbler yet.” 


THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 67 


father, Janiculo, the country basket maker, with the 
sadness of her life at court. The famous lyric of Babulo, 
the witty clown and basket-maker, beginning “Art thou 
poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers, etc.” is general 
in its praise of honest labor; no special attention is 
given in the play to basket-making. 

Two plays of Dekker that present well the atmos- 
phere of crafts are If it be not good, the Devil is in it, 
1612; and The Honest Whore, Part I, 1604, and Part II, 
1630, the end of Part I containing the famous words of 
Candido the linen-draper: “Christ the first true gentle- 
man that ever breathed.” Dekker and Middleton’s 
Roaring Girl likewise contains vivid pictures of shop 
life. 

Several plays deal with the craft of millers. Faire 
Em, the Miller’s Daughter of Manchester, 1587," is a 
play that deals with mill scenes. Fletcher and William 
Rowley’s play, The Maid in the Mill, 1623, is worthy 
of some attention. It portrays realistically a miller 
(whose craft was a synonym for cheating and trickery 
from the Middle Ages) who nobly demands of the king 
his abducted daughter, Florimel.** The play is, there- 
fore, a tribute to a despised craft, as Rawlins’ Rebellion 
is to that of the tailors. In the house of her abductor, 
Count Otrante, Florimel sings songs which deal with 
her former trade. The following examples are almost 
in the spirit of Dekker’s early plays. 


‘2 The ballad, The Miller’s Daughter of Manchester, was per- 
haps the source of this play. There was a lost, undated play, 
The King and Miller of Manchester, referred to on page 124 of 
Ritson’s English Songs, vol. 2. 

‘4 The behavior of Cordolente in Match me in London is 
similar. 


68 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


Now having leisure, and a happy wind, 

Thou mayst at pleasure cause the stones to grind; 
Sails spread, and grist here ready to be ground; 
Fy, stand not idly, but let the mill go round!*® 


Shall the sails of my love stand still? 

Shall the grist of my hopes be unground? 
Oh fy, oh fy, oh, fy! 

Let the mill, let the mill go round!*°® 


A number of ballads deal with millers, often in a 
figurative way. A Song‘ is a late ballad that relates 
to the contentment of a miller, as a few lines of it will 
illustrate. 


How happy the mortal 

That lives by his mill; 

That depends on his own, 

Not on fortune’s wheel. 

His mill goes clack, clack, clack, 
How merrily, how merrily, 

His mill goes clack. 


The tinker is a stock figure in the literature of the 
period. He is often represented as a wanderer who 
makes more holes in a kettle than he mends. The fol- 
lowing song is typical of tinkers: 


Have you any work for a tinker, mistress? 
Old brass, old pots, or kettles? 
I’le mend them all with a tink, terry, tink, 
And never hurt your mettles.** 


The blacksmith is a figure celebrated in a number 


f* Act 6, st. 2. ** Act’ 6, at. (a: 

*" D’Urfey’s Pills to Purge Melancholy, vol. 3, p. 125. Jack 
Miller’s Song is another figurative ballad. 

*8 The Tinker, from Catch that Catch can, 1667, Percy Socy. 
PVMe VOL Ley 155. 


THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 69 


of ballads and songs.*® One of the best portrayals of 
a blacksmith is that of Hodge in the play called Thomas 
Lord Cromwell, 1602. Hodge, a Putney blacksmith, 
travels to Italy with Cromwell. If the seas get rough, 
says Hodge, he will call on Vulcan, lord of the smiths, 
whose godhead will protect them. At Florence they 
are robbed of all their possessions. Hodge is about 
to take up his old trade, but expresses the hesitation 
of a local craftsman thus: 


I am not acquainted with the humour of the horses in this 
country; whether they are not coltish, given much to kicking, 
or no; for when I have one leg in my hand, if he should up 
and lay t’other on my chaps, I were gone.”° 


The importance of such a utilitarian trade as his is 
stressed by Hodge; the rich or noble may at any time 
be reduced to want, but if trained to work at some 
trade, they may subsist anywhere.*? 


Four plays of interest that introduce the figure 
of the collier are Ulpian Fulwel’s interlude, Like Will 
to Like, 1568; Richard Edwards’ Damon and Pithias, 
1571; Grim the Collier of Croydon, written about 1600; 
and Anthony Brewer’s Love-Sick King, 1605. To a 
certain extent, these plays depict colliers consistently ; 


*° For example, The Blacksmith, Percy Socy. Pub., vol. 1, 
p. 126; and Who will be the smith’s man? Percy Socy., vol. 1, 
p. 152. 

Other ballads, frequently hardly more than doggerel, that 
summarize the features of one or more crafts, are The Merchant- 
Taylor's Song, The Conny Barber, The Brewer, London’s ordi- 
nary, and The Jolly Tradesmen. 

5° Thomas Lord Cromwell, A. F. Hopkinson edition, Act 3, 
Ses Dp. 20: 


51 There is a similar observation in The Four Prentices of 
London. 


70 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


blackened hands and faces associate the collier with 
the devil. 

The best portrait of a collier, and one that shows 
him to best advantage as a citizen and craftsman is 
in Brewer’s The Love-Sick King, 1605, in the character 
of Grim of Newcastle. His conduct in war has already 
been mentioned. As director of seven hundred colliers 
for the coal merchant, Randal, he encourages them, 
telling them not to be ashamed to carry coals. Some 
day he intends to be a lord, and all colliers under him 
shall be ladies with black masks. 


A feature of great interest is his pride in Newcastle 
and its valuable product, coal. At first worried for 
fear the Croydon colliers in rivalry will learn to make 
charcoal out of wood, he soon assures everyone that 
the superior excellence of Newcastle coal to that of 
Croydon will be at once recognized. Having been 
granted the position of the King’s coal-carrier, he asks 
that Newcastle colliers be placed above Croydon col- 
liers. 

This is a unique and important feature. There are 
many instances of rivalry between allied crafts, but 
none in drama so excellent as this of a craftsman’s 
civic pride in his work. 

The drawer is another favorite figure in the drama. 
As his name implies, his chief duty is to draw wine 
and to supply guests with it.°? This trade is well rep- 
resented in Heywood’s Fair Maid of the West, 1621 (?). 
Clem, a drawer in the service of Besse, reflects his 
trade in all of his actions. Indeed, in the long list of 
craftsmen that Heywood presents in his plays, Clem 


5° Drawers or tapsters appear in Shakespeare’s Measure for 
Measure, Barry’s Ram Alley, Nabbes’ Covent Garden, etc. 


THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 71 


is one of the very best portraits. He appears to good 
advantage as an artisan in the frequency with which 
he uses puns on his craft. In this respect he resembles 
the shoemakers, for like the tools of their craft, so the 
term “draw’’ may be extended to have several mean- 
ings. He says to Besse, who disguises herself as a man 
and wears a sword: “If you should swagger and kill 
anybody, I being a Vintner should be called to the 
Barre.’’** There is the following dialogue between him 
and the bully of the play: 


CLEM. If you lug me by the eares again, Ile draw. 
ROUGHMAN. Ha, what will you draw? 
CLEM. The best wine in the house.** 


He will not remain on land, but accompanies his 
mistress on her naval expedition against the Spaniards: 


No, it shall be seene that I who have beene brought up to 
draw wine, will see what water the ship drawes, or Ile beray 
the voyage... I doubt not but to prove an honour to all the 
Drawers in Cornwall.°* 


Clem’s ready mention of the various wines testifies to 
his enthusiasm as a salesman: 


What wine will you drinke? Claret, Metheglin, or Muskadine, 
Cyder or Pyrrey, to make you merry, Aragoosa, or Peter-see-mee, 
Canary or Charnico?°® 


He is daring, adventurous, proud and aspiring. He 
marches to the banquet and dances with the Moors. 


58 Heywood: Dramatic Works, 1874 ed., vol. 2, p. 284. 

54 Page 292. In Heywood’s Fortune by Land and Sea, a 
drawer thinks that a man is slain, and exclaims: “They have 
drawn blood of this gentleman that I have drawn many a quart 
of wine to.” 

55 Page 311. 5° Page 301. 

5* Page 397. 


72 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


Thinking that his mistress has been captured, he falls 
to his old trade again, and never discontinues talking 
about his pints and “‘pottles.” ‘I am Clem of Foy, the 
Bashaw of Barbarie, who, from a Courtier of Fesse, 
am turned a Drawer in Florence.” 

A craft of some importance in the literature is that 
of the tailors. Proud of their title, “merchant-tailors,” 
and of the fact that many kings and princes were free 
of the company,°® the tailors enjoyed a certain emi- 
nence. Individual tailors are sometimes represented, 
however, who are mere botchers; i. e., poor workmen. 
In The Weakest Goeth to the Wall, 1600, is depicted 
a botcher, Barnabie Bunch, as a jolly and witty devotee 
of English ale. He is a contrast to the French tailor 
type in his national preferences. His trade was formerly 
that of an English ale-draper (an ale-house keeper), 
and he claims that in England, but not in France, a 
poor person can get ale for a penny. While at work 
with his shears, he complains about the bad smelling 
socks of the French. But his prevailing cheerfulness, 
singing while toiling, his reverence for the tailor’s 
craft, and his promise to the apprentices, on being 
made sexton, not to ring the morning bell until it is 
past five (thus giving them an extra hour’s sleep), 
remind us of the excellent early creations of Dekker. 

Some of the leading satirical works on tailors are 
among the later ballads, such as The Maidens Frollick, 
in which six girls, disguised as seamen, press fourteen 
timid tailors for service.®® In An Answer to the Maidens 


5§ This is seen in their mayoralty shows and in The Merchant 
Taylor’s Song, Evans’ Old Ballads, vol. 3, p. 8. 


°° Roxburghe Ballad Socy., vol. 3, p. 402. 


THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 73 


Frollick, one of the tailors says, on discovering the 
fraud: 


Calling my wife, she’d ’a ended the strife; 
But from my own part I ne’er fought in my life — 
I’m a tailor. 


Another humorous ballad of this type is one called A 
Dreadful Battle between a Taylor and a Louse,® which 
tells how a tailor attacks a louse with all his weapons: 
needle, shears, etc., protecting himself with only a 
thimble. He finally conquers her and throws her into 
his “hell.’’® 

Since tailors are fashioners and caterers to pride, 
they are at times represented as artistic. In the pro- 
logue to Lyly’s Midas, 1592, are the words: 


Come to the taylor, hee is gone to the painters to learne how 
more cunning may lurke in the fashion, then can be expressed 
in the making.** 


Taylor’s Prayse of the Needle, printed in 1640, gives 
some realistic detail of the arts of sewing and em- 
broidery.®* They are glorified in the usual stereotyped 
ways by reference to their antiquity; their universal 


*° Roxburghe Ballad Socy., vol. 7, p. 466. 
Ballads with somewhat similar themes are A Leicestershire 
Frolic and Courageous Betty of Chick Lane. 


‘2 “Hell” was the name given to a compartment under a 
tailor’s table in which he threw stolen material from gar- 
ments. Cf. Overbury’s description of a tailor in Characters and 
Stephen’s description of a tailor’s man in Essayes and Char- 
acters. 


* The same play goes into some treatment of the re 
Motto, as an artist who studies the court fashions. Cf. 
conversation between Pennyboy, iy and the “ap ara a 
Jonson’s Staple of News, act 1, sc. 


** Realism appears in the mention of a number of eriene: 
and types of needle work. 


74 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


and manifold use; by the fact that illustrious persons 
of past and present practiced the arts; and because the 
arts themselves are associated with) beauty in their 
power to depict nature. 

In The Fair Maid of the Exchange, 1607, perhaps 
by Thomas Heywood, there is a female apprentice, 
Phillis, who visits the shop of a pattern drawer with 
whom she is in love, and says that she wants him to 
do a piece of work in the following way: 


Onely this handkercher, a young gentlewoman, 
Wish’d me acquaint you with her mind herein: 
In one corner of the same, place wanton love, 
Drawing his bow shooting an amorous dart, 
Opposite against him an arrow in a heart, 

In a third corner, picture forth disdaine 

A cruell fate unto a loving vaine. 


In the fourth draw a springing Laurel tree 
Circled about with a ring of poesie: and thus it is: 
Love wounds the heart, and conquers fell disdaine, 
Love pitties love, seeing true love in paine: 

Love seeing’ Love, how faithfull Love did breath, 
At length impald Love with a Laurell wreath.** 


There is a ballad of a certain literary merit that 
celebrates the dignified and ancient craft of weaving, 
ennobling it as an art rather than as a mere com- 
mercial pursuit. The ballad, whose opening lines are 
lost, gives the words of a father who is apprenticing 
his son to the weaver’s craft. He mentions the ancient 
dignity of the craft; there is, moreover, practical value 
in having such an art at one’s fingers’ ends: 


For skill doth stay when goods be gone 
and riches all be spente. 


** Heywood: Dramatic Works, vol. 2, 1874 ed., pp. 31, 32. 


THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 75 


The father does not fail to observe that Minerva 
practiced the art. 


An arte whose end was never knowne, 
a curious®® arte and fine, 

even such as Pallas, heavenly dame, 
did practice many a tyme. 

Therefore, to doe thy father’s will 
thy paines do thou imploye 

so shalt thou be a commonwealth 

a member of great joy.°°® 


Artistry in the goldsmith’s craft is to be found in 
Drayton’s Epistle, Edward IV to Jane Shore, in his 
England’s Heroical Epistles, 1597. The story of Jane 
Shore is a very popular one, many works having been 
written about her.* 

Jane Shore, wife of Matthew Shore, a citizen (and, 
according to Heywood’s play, Drayton’s poems, and 
the ballads, a goldsmith), prostitutes herself for King 


*® Curious; i.e., the art was one in which there was much 
to be learned, and much accuracy to be used. 


*¢ Shirburn Ballads, appendix IV. 


** At least a dozen works besides the prose chronicles deal 
with it; and there are many references to it in historical and 
literary works. There is a poem on the subject by Thomas 
Churchyard in Mirror for Magistrates, one by Anthony Chute, 
and two by Michael Drayton in his Heroical Epistles. There 
are also a number of ballads on Jane Shore; and there are plays 
that introduce or refer to her, as the various plays on Richard III, 
as well as dramas in which she plays a conspicuous part, as The 
Booke of Shoare, The Life and Death of Master Shoare, 1599 
(doubtless confused with Heywood’s King Edward IV, in two 
parts, 1600) ,* a lost play of 1602 called Jane Shore, and Nicholas 
Rowe’s Jane Shore, 1714. 

* In Pimlyco is a reference to a play called Shore and its 
popularity. 

*® She married young. When the king tempted her, ‘“‘the 
respect of his royaltie, the hope of gay apparel, ease, pleasure, 


and other wanton wealth, was able soone to perse a soft tender 
heart.” — Hall: Chronicle, S. 363. 


; 


76 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


Edward IV. Her motive, brought out carefully in some 
accounts, is pride.** A concubine and person of much 
power, influence, and beneficence in the court during 
the king’s lifetime, she is condemned by his successor, 
Richard III, to do public penance as a whore. 

Drayton’s Epistle is a combination of romance and 
realism, and may have been used by Heywood in his 
King Edward IV. It describes how King Edward IV 
comes disguised to see the famous Jane Shore in her 
husband’s goldsmith shop in Lombard Street, London. 
Poetic and imaginative though the picture is, it gives 
the atmosphere of the goldsmith’s shop excellently well. 
The craftsman’s wife being in the shop is typical of 
many shops, especially as depicted in the literature of 
the 17th century. A handsome wife or daughter was 
not only a worker in the shop, but was also frequently 
exhibited by the master there, because she attraeted 
customers. It became a rather frequent theme in the 
17th century drama for the prodigal gallant to revenge 
himself on the deceptions of the craftsman by seducing 
this wife or daughter. So it is with this poem to some 
extent: the city meanness may be represented by the 
goldsmith, Matthew Shore, and the prodigal and lustful 
gallant may be typified in King Edward IV. 

The king begrudges the city such a beauty as Jane 
Shore, greater than any in the court. In technical 
terms familiar to her through her knowledge of the 
jeweler’s and goldsmith’s craft, he presents his suit to 
her, flattering her beauty, and luring her by an appeal 
to her aspirations in such words as “kingly state.” 

If now thy Beauty be of such Esteem, 


Which all of so rare Excellency deem? 
What would it be, and prized at what Rate, 


THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 17 


Were it adorned with a Kingly State? 
Which being now but in so mean a Bed, 
Is like an un-cut Diamond in Lead, 

E’er it be set in some high-prized Ring, 
Or garnished with rich Enamelling; 

We see the Beauty of the Stone is spilt, 
Wanting the gracious Ornament of Gilt.*° 


The king continues, giving a description of the gold- 
smith, whose quick eye has observed the king’s interest 
in something in his shop: 


Passing thy Shop, thy Husband call’d me back, 
Demanding what rare Jewel I did lack, 

I want (thought I) one that I dare not crave, 
And one, I fear, thou wilt not let me have. 

He calls for Caskets forth, and shews me store; 
But yet I knew he had one Jewel more, 

And deadly curs’d him, that he did deny it, 
That I might not for Love or Money buy it. 


The cook is an interesting figure in literature of the 
period. Sometimes he is represented as a tyrant in 
the kitchen, as in Thomas Nabbes’ Microcosmus, 1637; 
at other times he is depicted as one having rare deco- 
rative talents. The cook in Fletcher’s Rollo, 1624, and 
Furnace, the cook in Massinger’s New Way to Pay Old 
Debts, 1632, are excellently delineated. 

The most poetic and comprehensive description of 
a cook’s craft, one that may have influenced later de- 
scriptions of cooks, is in Jonson’s Staple of News, 1625. 
Lickfinger’s description of his office, that of a cook, 
is almost worthy to compare with the treatment of 
shoemakers in Rowley’s and Dekker’s plays above de- 
scribed : 


6° Lines 23-32. 


18 


THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


A master-cook! why, he’s the man of men, 

For a professor! he designs, he draws, 

He paints, he carves, he builds, he fortifies, 
Makes citadels of curious fowl and fish, 

Some he dry-dishes, some motes round with broths; 
Mounts marrow-bones, cuts fifty-angled custards, 
Rears bulwark pies, and for his outer works, 

He raiseth ramparts of immortal crust; 

And teacheth all the tactics, at one dinner: 
What ranks, what files, to put his dishes in; 
The whole art military. Then he knows 

The influence of the stars upon his meats, 

And all their seasons, tempers, qualities, 

And so to fit his relishes and sauces. 

He has nature in a pot, ’bove all the chymists, 
Or airy brethren of the Rosie-cross. 

He is an architect, an engineer, 

A soldier, a physician, a philosopher, 

A general mathematician.”° 


The opening part of The Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll, 


1600, has some excellent poetry on the art of painting. 
Earl Lassingbergh, disguised as a painter, makes a 
picture of his love, Lucilia, who reproves him for being 
a mercenary painter. He replies that painting is an 
art that approaches that of the creation of the world: 


the world 
With all her beautie was by painting made. 
Looke on the heavens colour’d with golden starres, 
The firmamentall ground of it all blew: 
Looke on the ayre where, with a hundred changes, 
The watry Rain-bow doth imbrace the earth: 
Looke on the summer fields adorned with flowers, — 


7° The Works of Ben Jonson, 1875 edition, vol. 5, Act 4, se. 1, 
p. 252. These lines are also found in Jonson’s masque Neptune’s 
Triumph. The lines were taken from Posidippus’s Athenaeus. 


THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 719 


How much is natures painting honour’d there? 
nature her selfe divine, 
In all things she hath made is a meere Painter."* 


An important feature of the artisan and his labor 
is in the work and trade songs. These frequently ex- 
press a deep interest in the labor and give a vivid 
atmosphere to the scene. A number of the work songs 
have been discussed already.” 

A song that is very vivid in its picture of the work 
in question is one from Ralph Roister Doister; Annot 
knits, Tibet sews and Madge spins on the distaff: 


Pipe Mery Annot, etc., 

Trilla, Trilla, Trillarie, 

Worke Tibet, worke Annot, worke Margerie. 
Sewe Tibet, knitte Annot, spinne Margerie, 
Let us see who shall winne the victorie. 


Pipe merrie Annot, etc., 

Trilla, Trilla, Trillarie, 

What Tibet, what Annot, what Margerie, 

Ye sleepe, but we doe not, that shall we trie. 
Your fingers be nombde, our worke will not lie. 


Pipe mery Annot, etc., 

Trilla, Trilla, Trillarie, 

Nowe Tibet, nowe Annot, nowe Margerie, 
Nowe whippet apace for the maystrie, 
But it will not be, our mouth is so drie."* 


11 A. H. Bullen, Old Plays, vol. 3, p. 100. 

St. Bonaventura, a 13th century Franciscan, compares the 
human artificer to the “Great Artificer.” De Reductione Artium 
ad Theologiam, section 26. 

72 Those already discussed are the lyric in Patient Grissel 
beginning: “Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers;” the 
weavers’ song in Jack of Newbury; and the journeymen shoe- 
makers’ poem about St. Hugh’s bones in Deloney’s Gentle Craft. 
Part 1. 

7° Act 1, se. 3. 


80 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


What could be more vivid as a description of tired 
and sleepy working girls, trying in vain to continue 
their work? The attempt to ward off sleep by singing 
and competing with one another is arrested by in- 
creasing drowsiness, naturally accompanied by numb 
fingers and dry mouths. 

In any treatment of crafts and craftsmen, we are 
necessarily involved, to a certain extent, in a considera- 
tion also of trades. Traders on a small scale, such as 
peddlers and costermongers, frequently came from the 
ranks of the craftsmen, and manufactured some of 
their own wares.” Their trade cries contributed much 
to the noise and bustle of the street. The screaming 
of the fish-wives and oyster-wives became proverbial 
in the 16th and 17th centuries. Various works testify 
to the confusion caused by these tradesmen; e. g., 
Lydgate’s London Lickpeny. This gives the atmosphere 
of several medieval trade centers: in Westminster were 
sold felt hats and spectacles for the dignified and 
learned lawyers and scholars; in Cheapside the mercers 
cried out their wares of velvet, silk, and lawn; in 
Canwick Street the drapers congregated. Jacobean 
works that represent trade scenes and cries are Jon- 
son’s Silent Woman and Bartholomew Fair. 


Inasmuch as a thorough study of the trade cries is 
impossible here, attention will be given to some of the 
more literary selections, and the types of salesmanship 
that these represent. It must be understood that these 
rhymes were generally sung and not spoken; hence 
they had an additional attraction which is lost to the 
reader. Certain of the works to be considered re- 


“* C. Hindley’s History of the Cries of London is a good guide 
for this study. 


THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 81 


semble some of the preceding ones; but they vary from 
them in stressing the products for sale rather than 
the character of the craftsman or trader in question. 


These early trade and work songs are seldom paral- 
leled in the present day; although it is true that 
factory hands and laborers often sing or whistle in 
unison while at work, their songs seldom appertain 
to the work in which they are engaged. The dealers 
and merchants of today attempt to catch the prospec- 
tive buyer’s attention by some appeal to his desire 
rather than by any exhibition of singing.” In the 
depiction of tradesmen and artisans in Elizabethan 
literature, on the other hand, we have trade songs ex- 
tant; in certain cases the music of these has been 
preserved. Some of the finer ones, when given by a 
clear and musical voice, will catch the ear, just as a 
beautifully decorated shop window will attract the eye. 

Some trade songs deal with the selling of brooms; 
e. g., in Wilson’s Three Ladies of London Female Con- 
science tries to sell her brooms for old boots and shoes. 
In the interesting medley called The London Chanti- 
cleers, Heath, the broomman, sings out his wares, 
mentioning that it is necessary for women to keep 


*® There are, however, a few exceptions to this. Doubtless 
the following trade song has often been observed during the 
Christmas season: 


“Holly wreaths, holly wreaths, 
Come and buy your holly wreaths.” 


I have also observed the following song on one occasion: 


“Ten a bunch for celery hearts, 
All sweet celery hearts, 
Ten a bunch.” 


82 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


their rooms clean in order to gain the good will of 
the fairies. 

Two ballads that represent the praise of ale are 
The Merry Hostess™* and Good Ale for my Money.” 
The first of these presents a very lively picture of 
a tavern in which are many customers composed of 
craftsmen, and a hostess who praises the ale that she 
sells. 

Miscellaneous trade songs are typified very well in 
The Traders Medley,"® The Common Cries of London,” 
and Heywood’s verses called The Cries of Rome.®° 

One of the most poetic trade songs is in Oliphant’s 
Musa Madrigalesca.*: 


Fine knacks for ladies; 

Cheap, choice, nice and new. 

Good pennyworths but money cannot move; 

I keep a fair, but for the fair to view. 

A beggar may be liberal of love. 

Tho’ all my wares be trash, my heart is true. 


An interesting phase of this study is that which 
deals with the psychology of advertising. There have 
always been keen salesmen who know how to devise 
songs that have a universal appeal to customers. Still 
others rapidly read the various traits and desires of 
prospective customers and invent a song on the spur 
of the moment. There will follow, then, a few instances 
of the more poetic appeals to customers. 

An instance is in the following words sung by 


7° Roxburghe Ballad mantis vis 3; P. 306. 

** Roxburghe Ballads, vol. 

*8 J. Ashton’s Century of Béllods, p. 

7° J. P. Collier’s Book of Roxburghe Ballads, p. 207. 
8° They are at the end of his Rape of Luerece. 

81 Page 165. 


THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 83 


George, a mercer’s young and outwardly attractive 
apprentice in Middleton’s Anything for a Quiet Life: 


What is’t you lack, you lack, you lack? 
Stuffs for the belly or the back? 

Silk grograns, satins, velvet fine, 

The rosy-colour’d carnadine, 

Your nutmeg hue, or gingerline, 
Cloth-of-tissue or tabine, 

That like beaten gold will shine 

In your amourous ladies’ eyne, 

Whilst you their softer silks do twine? 
What is’t you lack, you lack, you lack?*’ 


This melodious passage illustrates good salesmanship. 
The young apprentice’s vivid presentation of the wares 
and his artful suggestion of “amorous ladies” un- 
doubtedly stimulated many customers.®° 

There are many songs that advertise clothing or 
certain personal decorations, and as a consequence are 
often associated with subtle flattery. For example, 
there is a trade song in G. Markham and W. Sampson’s 
play, Herod and Antipater. The dealer in the song be- 
ginning Come will you buy— claims that he has gums 
that can puff out fallen cheeks, and mentions several 
preparations to protract youth, and to promote love 
and fruitfulness. The Painter’s Song of London** de- 
scribes a merchant who tries to sell paint to girls to 
give them a good complexion. A more interesting 
specimen of this type is The Pedlar’s Lamentation. 

8? Act 2, sc. 2, opening lines. 

** In Act 1, sc. 3 of Massinger’s Renegado Vitelle, acting as 
shopkeeper, advertises his china ware in poetic language. The 
passage has, however, less concreteness than the above passage 
of Middleton. 


8* Percy Socy. Pub., vol. 1, p. 152. 
ees Collier’ sA Book of Roxburghe Ballads, p. 304. 


84 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


Here, the dealer exhibits his miscellaneous assortment 
of wares which comprise dresses, hoods, coifes, laces,. 
gloves, perfumes, hair powders and song-books. 


I’ll make you fine; 
Young Billy shall look as spruce as the day, 
And pretty sweet Betty more finer than May. 


One of the most poetic and artful of trade songs. 
is that sung by Autolycus in Shakespeare’s Winter’s 
Tale.®® 


Lawn, as white as driven snow; 
Cyprus, black as e’er was crow; 
Gloves, as sweet as damask roses; 
Masks for faces, and for noses; 
Bugle-bracelet, necklace-amber, 
Perfume for a lady’s chamber; 
Golden quoifs, and stomachers, 

For my lads to give their dears; 
Pins and poking-sticks of steel, 
What maids lack from head to heel: 
Come, buy of me, come; come buy, come buy; 
Buy, lads, or else your lasses cry; 
Come, buy, etc. 


A branch of salesmanship that offers good oppor- 
tunities for a keen merchant is the selling of ballads. 
It is a subject that draws us somewhat away from a 
study of craftsmen; but, since craftsmen, like many 
people of slim education, are superstitious, they take 
a deep interest in ballads that describe monstrosities, 
such as Autolycus’ one about a usurer’s wife who “was 
brought to bed of twenty money-bags at a burden.’ 
Craftsmen are especially interested in ballads that cele- 
brate their own exploits, as the Ballad of the London 


“Act, 4, 80.o. 87 Winter’s Tale, Act 4, sc. 3. 


THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 85 


Prentice, exhibited by Ditty, the ballad dealer, in The 
London Chanticleers.®® 


One phase of the artisan and his work that is stressed 
in the 17th century literature deals with his cheating 
in trade. This treatment is not new with the 17th 
century; in the Middle Ages certain trades, such as 
the miller’s®® were especially open to criticism. In the 
early years of Elizabeth’s reign some of the plays of 
Robert Wilson expose the abuses in trade; F. T’s De- 
bate betweene Pride and Lowliness, 1570, c.,®° and 
Gascoigne’s Steel Glas, 1576, are poems which do like- 
wise. The last mentioned work anticipates a Utopia 
in the industrial and commercial world only when 
certain deceptions in trade are discontinued. Among 
other criticisms the author accuses cutlers of selling 
rusty blades and hiding cracks with solder; goldsmiths 
of using soldered crowns; upholsterers of selling feath- 
ers with dust; and pewterers of infecting tin with 
lead.*? 


The prose of the period frequently represents crafts- 
men as deceivers or as the victims of cheating. The 
jest-book is a form of popular prose that sometimes 
deals with artisans. In its commonest form the jest- 
book introduces a character who is invariably success- 
ful in any trick, however contemptible and stupid, that 
he plays on someone else, the victim usually being an 
extreme type of gull. We see this tendency of jesting 
in some of Deloney’s characters, especially in the Green 
King, who is successful in a number of jests. A few 

®§ The play is in Dodsley’s Old English Plays, vol. 12. The 
passage referred to is in scene 3. 

3° Chaucer’s reeve’s tale of a miller is an illustration. 


°° This is the source of Greene’s Quip for an Upstart Courtier. 
*1 W. C. Hazlitt ed., vol. 2, pp. 211, 212 


86 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


of these tracts which lay emphasis on craftsmen are 
The Pleasant Conceites of Old Hobson the Merry 
Londoner, 1607,°2 The Mad Pranks and Merry Jests 
of Robin Goodfellow, 1588; Tarlton’s Newes out of 
Purgatory,®= on or before 1590; Scoggin’s Jests, 1565; 
Tarlton’s Jests;°* and The Cozenages of the Wests, 
1613.° Two works somewhat like the jest-books are 
The Tinker of Turvey, or The Cobler of Canterbury*® 
and Westward for Smelts, 1603.°" Both of these works 
are somewhat imitative of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, 
in that several characters tell stores appropriate to 
their occupation and rank that picture rivalry between 
different trades and crafts. 


In the prose of Greene and Dekker are representa- 
tions of artisans and traders who are either cheated 
by professional sharpers or who are deceptive them- 
selves. Greene’s Notable Discovery of Coosnage, 1591-2, 
and Dekker’s Jests to Make You Merry, 1607, are in- 
stances of the former type. 


One of the best illustrations of the craftsmen as 
deceivers is Greene’s Quip for an Upstart Courtier, 
1592,°° a prose work partly allegorical, partly humor- 


*? This work, which was published by Richard Johnson may 
be found in Percy Socy. Pubs., vol. 9. In Heywood’s If You 
Know Not Me, You Know Nobody the same well known haber- 
dasher appears but is delineated differently. 

** Shakespeare Society, 1920. 

** Shakespeare Socy., 19-20. 

°> Shakespeare Socy., 25-26. This work, which tells how Alice 
West, a fortune teller, deceives many craftsmen, throws light 
on the superstitions of the latter. 

°6 The Tinker of Turvey, 1600, c., is a modification of an 
earlier tract, The Cobler of Caunterburie, 1590. 

°7 Percy Socy., vol. 21. 

*’ The work may be found in Collier’s Miscellaneous Tracts. 
The source of Greene’s work is F. T’s Debate betweene Pride 
and Lowliness. 


THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 87 


ous, and partly realistic. Greene treats craftsmen as 
mischievous sharpers in general, but in a somewhat 
good-humored way, presenting them as sly rogues 
rather than as malicious scoundrels. Nevertheless, this 
study introduces representatives of some sixty crafts 
(including all of the twelve great companies except 
the salters and fishmongers) nearly all of whom are 
accused of cheating, and their deceptive tricks are 
described. The work also charges them with pride, a 
trait to be later on censured by Dekker. 

The story tells how, on a spring day, from opposite 
directions there appear to a certain dreamer one in 
fine velvet breeches and another in plain cloth ones. 
The former, representing one of noble blood, claims 
priority in England. Cloth-breeches, the English citizen, 
however, claims a better right to it as representative 
of “the old and worthie customs of the gentilitie and 
yeomanrye of England,’ and a wearer of what his 
forefathers wore before there was pride. To Velvet- 
breeches’ claim that he was called from Italy and 
condescended to come into England, Cloth-breeches 
replies: 


Is an ancient honor tied to an outward bravery or not rather 
true nobility, a minde excellently qualified with rare vertues?’°® 


Velvet-breeches, he continues, is the refuse of Italy, 
and is coming to degenerate England also. 

A court session is arranged to decide it, Velvet- 
breeches being plaintiff. The disputants wait now for 
jurymen. One craftsman or tradesman appears after 
another, their merits and vices are weighed while they 
are considered for eligibility to the jury. In this way 

°° Page 16. 


88 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


the deceits in the different trades are exposed. To take 
an illustration, Velvet-breeches will not have a mer- 
chant, mercer, goldsmith, or draper, because each of 
these is often a usurer. Criticisms of other craftsmen 
follow. A tanner, shoemaker, and currier appear. 
Cloth-breeches criticises the private gains of the tan- 
ner, a craftsman who is, for the most part, prosperous. 
The tanner has many devices to make leather quickly, 
but of poor quality. He uses fats wrongly in the treat- 
ment of hides. Instead of letting a hide lie for nine 
months, he lets it lie only three months. Marle and 
ashenbark are used to make the leather appear good, 
but it is really no more lasting than paper. The tanner 
cares nothing for others; he thinks mainly of marrying 
his daughter to a rich esquire. The currier, continues 
Cloth-breeches, is also bad. He uses mixed kitchen 
stuff, instead of tallow. He buys leather pieces, calf 
skins, etc., and sells them at too high a price to the 
poor shoemaker, who must buy in small quantities. 
Despite the fact that shoemakers are the victims of 
more fortunate tanners and curriers, the latter some- 
times are in league with a rascal shoemaker “that 
neither respecteth God, the commonwealth, nor his 
company.’’?°> Shoemakers often join a neat’s leather 
vamp to a calf’s leather heel. A skinner, joiner, sad- 
dler, waterman, cutler, bellows-mender, plasterer, and 
printer appear. Velvet-breeches approves of some of 
them because he gets them to do superfluous work for 
his clothes. Cloth-breeches, however, has a series of 
accusations: the skinner takes a cheap skin, and 
swears that it came from Muscovy or Calabria; the 
saddler stuffs his pannels with straw; the joiner puts 


70° Page 46. 


THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 89 


sap into the mortesels (i.e., mortices) ; the cutler 
cheats poor men. Cloth-breeches makes charges of one 
kind or another against nearly all craftsmen: the brick- 
layer makes chimneys that do not transmit smoke 
properly; the butcher, partly forced to cheat because 
the grazier charges him exorbitant sums for cattle, 
puts fresh blood on an old cow, and sells it for new; 
the brewer is far too sparing of his malt; the baker, 
whose chief interest is in making his daughter a gentle- 
woman, puts yeast and salt in the bread to make it 
heavy ; tapsters and victuallers put much froth in their 
cans, and add more to the score than the customer 
ordered or received ; vintners treat colorless wines with 
the strongly colored, and dilute the more expensive 
ones with the cheaper; cooks serve cheap and old 
meats; the tinker makes three holes where he mends 
one,? and is partly a highway robber; chandlers use 
dross over wicks and put tallow on the outside; haber- 
dashers trim up old felts to pass for new; grocers 
adulterate spices with dross and refuse; millers take 
double toll, and have false hoppers to convey away 
the meal. 


The crafts that receive the largest amount of censure 
are several of the rich livery companies, especially 
those connected with the clothing industry, the mem- 
bers of which were, together with those of several other 
companies, guilty of usury. Velvet-breeches complains 
of the usury and extortion of goldsmiths as follows: 


...they let young gentlemen have commodities of plate for 
ten in the hundred, but they must loose the fashion in sellinge 


102 The making of several holes while mending one was a 
proverbial charge against tinkers, as several of the ballads 
illustrate. 


90 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


it againe ..... beside they are most of them skilde in alcumy, 
and can temper metals shrewdly,’®’ with no little profite to 
themselves and disadvantage to the buier.*°* 


The draper keeps such a dark shop that no man can 
choose a piece of cloth with accuracy.’ He has the 
clothworker draw and stretch the cloth to make it seem 
large, a practice which weakens it. The clothworkers 
make cloth appear to have a fine nap by pressing and 
powdering it; they prove themselves the draper’s min- 
isters to execute his subtleties. Cloth-breeches then 
accuses the weavers of drawing out thread in such a 
way as to make it seem heavily woven, though it is 
really slenderly woven. They steal much yarn froia 
poor country wives. Referring to the foreign customs 
introducing themselves into English dress at this time, 
Cloth-breeches says of a Dutch shoemaker and a French 
milliner that ‘‘they be of Velvet-breeches’ acquaintance, 
upstarts as well as he, that have brought with them 
pride and abuses into England.’?* Their superfluities 
are spoken of; they take work from London handi- 
craftsmen. 

The various craftsmen conclude that Cloth-breeches 
is the better and more ancient of the two. He was a 
companion to kings, nobility, etc., whereas Velvet- 


702 Cf. Jonson’s The Alchemist. 


*°8 Page 57, line 1. In Eastward Hoe, by Marston, Chapman, 
and Jonson, printed in 1605, Quicksilver, the goldsmith’s way- 
ward apprentice, though he has learned no industry from his 
trade, is familiar with deceptive devices of goldsmiths. He 
proposes to “blanche copper ;”’ i. e., sublime it with arsenic, make 
it malleable and tenacious like silver, and then sell it for silver. 
He also intends to dissolve parts of angels in nitric acid and 
put dross on them in such a way that they shall recover their 
weight and shape. 


7°4 Cf. Michaelmas Term. 
*°° Page 65, line 5. 


THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 91 


breeches, begot of pride, and having come from Italy, 
is a raiser of rents and an enemy of the Commonwealth. 

A writer more Puritanical than Greene, and one who 
describes the deceptions of several crafts is Philip 
Stubbes. To testify partly that Stubbes and Greene 
were truthful in some of their accusations against 
craftsmen, mention might be made of some of the 
Elizabethan laws.?°° Statutes were directed against 
some of the stretching and drawing tricks of weavers 
and tuckers. 

In Stubbes’ Anatomy of Abuses, Part 2, 1583, he 
presents in the form of a dialogue complaints against 
various crafts and trades. There is here, then, much 
similarity to what has already been said about Greene’s 
work. Deceits of miscellaneous crafts are exposed; 
those of fashioners, such as tailors, are harshly criti- 
cised as they are in the work of Greene, Rich,‘ and 
Dekker. 

Stubbes departs for once from this stereotyped 
registering of vices in his humorous description of 
barbers. These are necessary, for men look beastly 
with long unkempt hair. With their several cuts, the 
Italian, French, and Spanish, they can make cus- 
tomers look handsome or terrible. They twirl mus- 
taches from one ear to the other. Lathering is graphic- 
ally described. The customer is perfumed, sprinkled 
with fragrant waters, and entertained by music. The 
extreme politeness of barbers is also mentioned. 

Dekker’s Worke for Armorours, 1609, an allegory 
that throws light on the industrial and social evils of 
the age, is sympathetic with the poorer crafts, but 


1°6 New Shakespeare Socy., Series 6, 12, page XIV. 
1°7 Barnaby Rich: The Honesty of this age, 1614. 


92 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


hostile to the richer ones, such as the mercers and 
goldsmiths. Cheating in trades is well represented in 
Dekker’s Seven Deadly Sins of London, 1606, and 
Newes from Hell, 1606. 

Ballads that represent deceptions in trade are The 
miller and his Sons,” “Merry Tom of all Trades,” “True 
Blew the Plowman,” “Robin Conscience,” “Poor Robins 
Dream,” and “Death’s Dance.” 

One of the traits of craftsmen and their families is 
pride. This is not slighted in literature; we see some 
of it in Simon of Southampton’s wife,?°* but there is 
more of this treatment in 17th century literature. Nash, 
Greene, Dekker, Stubbes, Rich, Rowlands, and Taylor 
frequently hold pride up to ridicule. Thomas Nash, 
with all his humor and vivacity, is at times Puritanical 
and harsh in his characterization. In his “Pierce 
Pennilesse,” 1592, he pictures the excessively proud 
artisans and merchants,?°? some of whom work them- 
selves by flattery into the good graces of noblemen. In 
his Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem, 1593, there is disdain 
of the citizen for the countryman, and of one craft 
for a lower; e. g., the shoemaker for the cobbler, and 
the cobbler for the carman.1*° Nash criticises strongly 
the use of face paints and powders by women, and 
their style of dress. In Stubbes’ Anatomy of Abuses, 
the writer is not only opposed to pride in dress, but is 
also opposed to the attending of shows and the playing 
of dice or cards. Henry Crosse’s Vertues Common- 

*°* Deloney’s Thomas of Reading. 
*°® Collier ed., p. 2. 


*7° McKerrow ed., vol. 1, p. 135. 
Part 1, New Shakespeare Socy., Series 6, 6. 


THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 93 


wealth,»? 1603, parallels some of the accusations of 
Stubbes in regard to counterfeit gentility. 

In some of the works of Greene, Dekker, and Rich, 
where the element of pride is stressed, it is largely 
fostered by the constant changing of fashions on the 
part of tailors, mercers and barbers. Greene, in his 
Defence of Conny-catching,“? combines the tailor’s 
catering to pride with his deception in trade. He 
changes the style each week, and takes advantage of 
the fact that he is supplied with the material for 
clothing; for, owing to the changing styles, foolish 
customers do not know how much velvet to send. The 
tailor asks for more material than is needed for the 
suit and steals the remainder. The relation of tailors 
to pride in their introduction of new fashions is seen 
in the following works of Dekker: Newes from Hell, 
A Knight’s Conjuring, The Gull’s Hornbook, Lanthorne 
and Candle-Light, A Strange Horse Race, and The 
Divels Last Will and Testament.” In the last named 
work, which is allegorical, Hypocrisie is represented as 
being bound to a Puritan tailor, and making with him 
nothing but cloaks of religion of a thousand colors. 
Dekker anticipates here the ridicule of Puritanical 
hypocrisy in the Cavalier period. We shall see then 
how Puritans have Biblical texts embroidered on their 
garments. The dramatists especially ridicule Puritan 
women, who were mainly of the middle classes, and 
whose trades dealt especially with the fashions and 
sports that they themselves condemn. They were 
starchers, bugle-makers, tire-women, feather-makers, 


722 Grosart’s Occasional Issues, vol. 7. 
72% Grosart ed., vol. 11. 


94 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


confect-makers, and French fashioners.* Barnaby 
Rich’s Honesty of this Age, 1614,7> and Samuel Row- 
lands’ Martin Markall, 1610, in their enumeration of 
several useless trades, carry on the criticism of tailors 
as caterers to pride. 

Taylor’s The World runnes on Wheels? is an inter- 
esting instance of rivalry between crafts. There is 
emphasized the evil effect that the introduction of 
coaches has on the watermen’s trade?’ and several of 
the others; e.g., the ancient and profitable trade of 
wheelwrights.138 

A most excellent illustration of the artisan’s cheating 
in trade combined with his pride and hatred of the 
high born classes is Middleton’s play, Michaelmas 
Term, 1607.11° It embodies several disagreeable aspects 
of the craftsman: cheating devices, usury, keen insight 
into customers, materialism, indifference to any family 
ties, suspicion in regard to his wife, love of worldly 
honor, wealth, and lands, desire to gain the wonder 
and the envy of fellow-craftsmen less fortunate. 


The figure of chief interest is Quomodo, a prosperous 
woolen-draper who darkens his shop and attributes the 


74* Randolph’s The Muse’s Looking Glass gives a good picture 
of a Puritan feather-maker. 


72° Percy Socy. Pub., vol. 11. 
72° Printed in 1630. 


‘47 Watermen did not form a craft, but they composed an 
organization which, as we shall see, aspired to social eminence 
in a manner somewhat similar to that of craftsmen. Most of 
Taylor’s works here referred to are in Spenser Socy. Pub., vol. 2 
to vol. 4. 

*28 The wheelwrights made carts. 


‘2° The element of rivalry between the highborn and the low- 
per is especially characteristic of Massinger’s New Way to Pay 
ld Debts. 


THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 95 


condition to the weather.?2° His two attendants and 
accomplices are Shortyard and Falselight, their names 
being suggestive of their characteristics. His trust in 
the deviltry of these decoys is expressed thus: 


Go, make my coarse commodities look sleek; 
With subtle art beguile the honest eye.**?’ 


Together with Gum, the mercer, and Profit, the gold- 
smith, Quomodo, the draper, is represented as a usurer. 
His usury as a means of obtaining possession of the 
lands or estates of others is the chief source of interest 
in the play. He looks longingly at the land of a certain 
gallant, Easy, who, wishing ready money with which 
to defray the expense of a banquet with his friends, 
tries to borrow money from Quomodo.?”? The latter, 
declaring that he has no money at hand, offers Easy 
a commodity of cloth, something which bankrupt 
gallants frequently received and tried to sell quickly. 
Shortyard acts as a decoy, and pretends to Easy that 
he himself is in debt, and that his name is Blastfield. 
Shortyard pretends that he, also, is trying to borrow 
money from Quomodo; and Easy is thus led to take 
up this commodity of cloth with Shortyard. Quomodo 
artfully leads up to a suggestion that Easy be one of 
the signers of the bond by politely insinuating that 

+20 Act 2, Scene 3. Dishonest tradesmen’s darkening their 
shops is a practice alluded to at times. Cf. Brome’s City Wit, 
Act 1, Scene 1. 


Ht Dyce ed., vol..1, p. 421. 

Another play that is excellent in its presentation of the various 
deceits of tradesmen is Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair, 1614. 

122 We have here a situation somewhat like that in The Mer- 
chant of Venice. A prodigal is in need of ready money from a 
close-fisted usurer, who knows how to take his advantage over 
his borrower’s helplessness. 


96 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


Easy has no substance. The gallant’s pride, which 
Quomodo has been constantly observing, leads him to 
say positively that he has land and wealth, and signs 
the bond to prove it :178 


Master John Blastfield esquire, i’ the wold of Kent: and 
Master Richard Easy, of Essex, gentleman, both bound to Ephes- 
tian Quomodo, citizen and draper of London; the sum, two 
hundred pound. 


Falselight, the other accomplice, appearing as a young 
man needing ready substance with which to start busi- 
ness, pays sixty pounds for Easy’s two hundred pounds’ 
worth of cloth. The time being past when Easy had 
promised to pay for the cloth, he is arrested on 
Quomodo’s suit by Shortyard and Falselight, who are 
disguised as sergeant and yeoman. 

The yearning for land and estates on the part of 
craftsmen is well typified in Quomodo’s joy on reflect- 
ing that Easy’s land of Essex will be his: 


The land’s mine; that’s sure enough, boy, now shall I be 
divulg’d a landed man throughout the livery; one points, another 
whispers, a third frets inwardly; let him fret and hang! Es- 
pecially his envy I shall have that would be fain, yet cannot be 
a knave, like an old lecher*** girt in a furr’d gown, whose mind 
stands stiff, but his performance down. Now come my golden 
days in. Whither is worshipful Master Quomodo and his fair 
bedfellow rid forth? To his land in Essex whence come those 
goodly loads of logs? From his land in Essex. Where grows 
this pleasant fruit, says one citizen’s wife in the row? At 
Master Quomodo’s orchard in Essex. O, O, does it so? I thank 
you for that good news, i’ faith.*’® 


A fine journey in the Whitsun holydays, i’faith, to ride down 


be ACh) a BCi ase 724 Lecher — leather. 
745 Act’ 3, sc.'4,.p.2475, 


THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK a4 


with a number of citizens and their wives, some upon pillions, 
some upon side-saddles, I and little Thomasine i’ th’ middle, our 
son and heir, Sim Quomodo in a beach-colour taffeta jacket, some 
horse-length, or a long yard before us,*??* — there will be a fine 
show on’s, I can tell you. 


Easy is brought into Quomodo’s shop and is con- 
fronted by the prospect of imprisonment unless some- 
one will stand bail for Easy on a single bond of “body, 
goods, and lands, immediately before Master Quomodo.”’ 


Successful though Quomodo is thus far, he is even- 
tually outwitted himself by a conspiracy of Thomasine, 
his wife, Easy, and his own accomplices. 


Not only in this play which so darkly presents city 
life, but also in many others of this period are illustra- 
tions of the way in which fashioners, such as gold- 
smiths, mercers, and tailors, cater to the whims and 
desires of stylish gallants. In Marmion’s Fine Com- 
panion, 1633,27 various craftsmen; e. g., tailors, semp- 
sters, and haberdashers cater to the interest of Careless, 
the “fine companion’, in new clothes and in new toys. 
Most politely do they flatter him and suggest new 
styles. 


Barbers are frequently introduced into plays. As- 
sociated with the Barber Surgeon’s Guild, they had the 
privilege not only of cutting hair but also of letting 
blood and extracting teeth. The plays frequently rep- 
resent them as cheats and as pretenders to greater 
surgical skill than they had. In Marston’s Dutch 

126 Act 4, sc. 1, p. 490. There is a situation similar to this 
in Middleton’s Trick to Catch the Old One. In this play, Hoard, 
an Seteee anticipates marrying a rich widow and riding to 


127 Tt is in Thomas White’s Old English Drama, vol. 4. The 
reference is to Act 1, sc. 4. 


98 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


Courtesan one who acts as a barber blinds his customer 
with soap, and then steals his money bag. In Beaumont 
and Fletcher’s Knight of the Burning Pestle, in Middle- 
ton’s Anything for a Quiet Life, and in the anonymous 
play, A Knave in Graine, are represented the barbers’ 
double occupation of haircutting and surgery, especially 
in connection with the treatment of venereal diseases.?2® 
Barbers, as well as mercers, tailors, and other fash- 
ioners, are frequently depicted as extravagant in their 
encouragement of foreign fashions. 


The element of pride in the artisan and his family 
is an interesting feature that will be stressed, some- 
what apart from their work, in the next chapter. 


+28 Quack surgery and aspirations of the unlearned to practice 
medicine and surgery are well represented in the following 
passage: 

‘In the time of Henry VIII, there was a great rabblement 
there, that took upon them to be surgeons. Some were sow- 
gelders, with tinkers and coblers. ..... In two dressings they 
did commonly make their cures whole and sound for ever, so 
that they neither felt heat nor cold, nor no manner of pain 
after.” 

From J. Halle’s An Historiall Expostulation, 1565. Percy 
Society, vol. 11. 


CHAPTER IV 


SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 


Something has already been said incidentally about 
the way in which artisans love to exhibit themselves 
in fashionable clothing, or in processions, such as the 
Lord Mayor’s Show. The catering on the part of fash- 
ioners to pride in customers was also discussed. French 
and Spanish tailors are especially unpopular, not only 
because they cater to pride, but also because they put 
many English artisans out of work. 


They brought in fashions strange and new 
with golden garments bright: 

The farthingale, and mighty cuffes, 
with gownes of rare delight. 

Our London dames in Spanish pride 
did flourish everywhere.’ 


The master craftsman as a social climber has been 
‘discussed in the passage dealing with Middleton’s 
Michaelmas Term; something remains to be said about 
the aspirations of the artisan’s wife or daughter or 
apprentice, as this is a favorite theme in 17th century 
popular literature, especially the drama. Writers like 
Beaumont and Fletcher mercilessly; satirize pride in 


* From The Lamentable Fall of Queen Elnor, Roxburghe 
Ballads, vol. 2, p. 362. 

During the apparent period of this ballad, the late 16th cen- 
tury, there was much rivalry between England and Spain. The 
story is also in Peele’s Edward I 

99 


100 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


the artisan class; Ben Jonson and his collaborator, 
Marston,’ do likewise. Middleton carries on the realistic 
and satirical depiction of craftsmen and craftswomen 
as apes of the nobility, and influences some of Dekker’s 
later plays in this respect. Disciples of Jonson, such 
as Brome, Cartwright, Randolph, Field, Marmion, 
Mayne, Glapthorne and Nabbes carry on his tradition, 
in this respect frequently repeating him or one another.? 
Some of these stock figures of the artisan class, as 
the apprentice or the craftswoman, occur also in the 
plays of miscellaneous writers, such as Cooke, Mass- 
inger, Ford, Tatham, and Shirley. Apprentices appear 
in some of the plays of Brome and especially of Shirley. 
In the plays of these later writers they are portrayed 
differently from the way in which 16th century writers 
portray them. 


The artisan’s imitation of the nobility is manifested — 


in one or more of the following ways: copying of words, 
expressions, or gestures of noblemen, wearing attire 
like that worn in court, intermarrying with knights or 
earls, trying to obtain possession of lordly manors or 
estates. The yearning for land is a trait particularly 
conspicuous in the figure of Quomodo. Some of the 
childish forms of imitation, however, remain to be 
considered first. 

Marston’s Dutch Courtesan, 1605, affords a good 
illustration of a vintner’s ambitious wife who has 
squires, gentlemen, and knights at her table to dine. 
Ashamed of the fact that her husband is a craftsman, 


fs Marston, Chapman, and Jonson collaborated in Hastward 
oe. 

* For example, Cartwright’s Ordinary and Mayne’s City Match 
are rough copies of Jonson’s Alchemist and Silent Woman 
respectively. 


SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 101 


she has things spread handsomely, so as to disguise her 
bringing up.‘ 


I was a gentlewoman by my sister’s side —I can tell ye so 
methodically. Methodically! I wonder where I got that word? 
O! Sir Aminadab Ruth bad me kiss him methodically! I had 
it somewhere, and I had it indeed.° 


In Middleton’s Chaste Maid in Cheapside, 1630, is 
the family of Yellowhammer, a goldsmith. The parents 
are desirous of marrying their son, Tim, and daughter, 
Moll, to wealth and renown. The former is thus sent 
to Cambridge, where he learns Latin, and the latter 
is taught dancing. The parents are unsuccessful in 
marrying their daughter as they wish to; but they 
succeed in marrying their son to a Welsh knight’s niece, 
their object being to gain eminence and exhibit a 
seemingly learned young couple: Tim with his Latin 
quotations and his wife with her Welsh language. As 
such plays frequently develop, however, Tim finds that 
he has married a woman of a shady past and limited 
fortune. 

Mistress Quickly in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 2, 
1597-9, hostess of a tavern in Eastcheap, is an instance 
of one from the ranks of the artisans who imitates the 
words and gestures of the nobility. A source of the 
humor in the play is to be seen in her misuse and 
confusion of words; e.g., using “confirmities’” for 
“infirmities”. Indeed, Shakespeare’s depiction of imi- 

* Pinnacia Stuff, in Jonson’s New Inn, is a gaudily dressed 
tailor’s wife, ashamed to be considered the wife of an artisan. 


This behavior is like that of the family in Brieux’s Three 
Daughters of M. Dupont. 


MPA) S,.sc..2. 
act 2) sc.) 4: 


102 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


tative and childish traits among artisans is as excellent 
as is that of any of the other dramatists. The love 
that citizens (as portrayed in literature) have for 
association with royalty or knighthood is frequently 
an important governing motive in their actions. Hence, 
Mistress Quickly is persuaded by Falstaff, the knight, 
to withdraw the lawsuit which she had against him 
on account of his debts. Falstaff’s tact is observable 
in the fact that he works on some of her characteristics 
that are typical of the citizen class, and flatters her 
very courteously. She bears in mind the important 
fact that this knight had promised to marry her and 
make her his lady. He had told her on the same day 
not to talk to Goodwife Keech, the butcher’s wife, nor 
to such poor people, for before long she would be 
called ‘‘Madam.’’? 

The development of the city woman in 16th and 17th 
century literature may be studied by considering a 
few miscellaneous works in which she appears. The 
wife of the craftsman from medieval times to 1601) 
is often represented as a valuable assistant to her 
husband in his work, or as an ardent worker in some 
other craft apart from his. Thus she is represented 
in several ballads; e. g., the medieval How a Merchande 
dyd hys Wyfe Betray; and Elizabethan parallels: 
Penny-wise, pound-foolish, 1631; The Penny-worth of 
Wit, 1560 c., and The Chapman of a Pennyworthe 
of Wit. In Deloney’s fiction the wife is frequently 
represented as the superior of her husband in intellect 
and initiative, and as an excellent fellow-worker; e. g., 
the wife of Simon Eyre. Exceptions, however, which 
have been already pointed out, exist in the literature 


" Henry IV, Part 2, Act 2, sc. 1. 


SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 103 


even of medieval times, a period in which the wife’s 
subservience to her husband was strongly insisted on. 
In Chaucer’s Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, the 
wives of the successful artisans are represented as 
proud of the social eminence that their husbands’ 
prosperity brings them. In Chaucer’s remarkable por- 
trait of the Wife of Bath he depicts a very individu- 
alized clothmaker who alone represents several aspects 
of the craftsman’s wife as she appears in the literature 
of the period from 1557-1642, an age of individualism 
as contrasted with medieval emphasis on institutions. 
This Wife of Bath has excellent skill in her trade of 
cloth-making, as several of the craftsmen’s wives in 
Deloney’s, Dekker’s, and Rowley’s literature have skill 
in their trades. She has also the yearning for social 
eminence and prestige, as depicted in some of the 
craftsmen’s wives in Stubbes’ Anatomy of Abuses, in 
Deloney’s fiction, and in the plays of Dekker, Jonson, 
Marston, Middleton, Massinger, and others. Chaucer’s 
Wife of Bath has still another trait that appears in 
the later drama (most of which appears long after 
the death of Elizabeth) : she desires sovereignty over 
her husband.® 

Coming to our period, we have several well deline- 
ated craftsmen’s wives in Deloney’s fiction; e. g., the 
industrious and enterprising wife of Simon Eyre, be- 
fore commented upon. Far though Deloney is from 
being a satirist of artisans, he depicts in Thomas of 
Reading several vain city wives. These accomplish 
nothing that is worth while, but in their desire to 

§ Excellent discussions of the Wife of Bath are in G. L. 
Kittredge’s Chaucer’s Discussion of Marriage, in Modern 


Philology, April, 1912; and in W. W. Lawrence’s Marriage Group 
in ‘The Canterbury Tales,’ in Modern Philology, Oct., 19138. 


104 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


travel to London, and to dress gaily as craftsmen’s 
wives do there, they anticipate a type common in 
Jacobean literature. The wives of Simon and Sutton 
prevail on their husbands to let them go to London, 
Simon’s wife claiming that a woman should not be 
cooped up, but should enjoy the greatest pleasure, 
which is to see the fashions and manners of unknown 
places. The London merchants and their wives are 
hospitable to them; but the fine clothes of these women 
excite the envy of the clothiers’ wives, “‘and grieved 
their hearts they had not the like.”® Simon’s wife sees 
no reason why the country dames, who are as beautiful 
as the city wives, and whose husbands are as rich as 
the Londoners, do not dress as well as the London 
merchants’ wives. She tries to persuade her husband 
to give her London apparel.*® She pretends, moreover, . 
that she is sick and about to die, and that her cure 
will be effected only if she is given London clothes. 
Her husband finally gives in; she is provided with fine 
Cheapside gowns, being content with no other kind. 
The rest of the clothiers’ wives follow her example, 
so that ever since, according to the story, “the wives 
of Southampton, Salisbury, Gloucester, Worcester, and 
Reading, went all as gallant and as brave as any 
Londoners’ wives.’ It is apparent that Deloney, 
writing as early as the last four years of the 16th 
century, had studied enough of the pride of craftsmen 
and merchants and their wives to anticipate some of 
the later portraits of artisans and citizens by Jonson, 


® Aldrich and Kirtland ed., Chap. 6, p. 65. 


*° Chap. 6, p. 74. In Dekker’s Batchelor’s Banquet is another 
such wheedling wife. 


SLE LG Ds ONeas 


SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 105 


Middleton, and Massinger. Simon’s wife not being 
satisfied with a fine gown unless it is of an especially 
stylish type, a Cheapside gown, is paralleled in Mass- 
inger’s portrait of a city wife who not only wants a 
coach, but also one drawn by four Flanders mares.” 


Interesting portrayals of craftsmen’s wives are seen 
in Rowley’s Shoemaker a Gentleman, 1609; and in 
Dekker’s Shoemakers’ Holiday, 1599. In the former 
play, Sisley, the shoemaker’s wife, is an industrious 
and skillful assistant to her husband in his work. 
Shrewish and overbearing though she is, the contrast 
to her meek husband, she does at no time express 
dissatisfaction with her low station in life. In Dekker’s 
play, though an earlier one than Rowley’s, there is 
_ presented a somewhat later stage of development of 
the craftsman’s wife. After Eyre, the shoemaker, puts 
on his alderman’s gown, his wife, Margery, realizes 
that she must now dress according to her high social 
station and get a French hood. 

Marston, Chapman, and Jonson’s Eastward Hoe, 
printed in 1605, is an extremely important member of 
a group of partially domestic plays in which craftsmen 
are introduced. 

Touchstone, a goldsmith, has two apprentices: Gold- 
ing, an industrious one; and Quicksilver, a lazy and 
wayward one. He has a wife who is at times indus- 
trious in the shop, but who is carried away by a desire 
for pomp and social eminence. This last tendency of 
hers is inherited in extreme degree by one of her 
daughters, Gertrude. Gertrude shuns her parents and 
their industry, will have nothing more to do with 


12 The City Madam, 1682. 


106 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


Chittizens,= and imitates the fashions of the court. 
She wears French and Scottish fashions in dress, and 
wants to be a “lady” and ride in a coach. Imitating 
still further the fashions of a lady, she reads chivalric 
romances. After she obtains temporary possession of 
a coach, her favorite expression becomes: “as I am 
a Lady.” Clever characterization on the part of the 
dramatists may be seen in this last expression. It is 
the custom of artisans, as they are presented in litera- 
ture, to use such exclamations as the following: “As 
God shall mend me,” “As true as I live,’’** and “‘As I 
am a true woman.” Gertrude’s “As I am a Lady” 
is thus merely a modification of this custom of artisans, 
a change of a word or two, as “woman” for “lady.” 
This shows that Gertrude, advanced socially as she sup- 
poses, unconsciously reveals the traits of the humbler 
classes from which she originated. 


Quicksilver, the wayward apprentice, is similar to 
Gertrude in some respects. He wears fine clothes, 
carries a sword, dwells on the fact that his mother 
was a gentlewoman, and quotes from the popular and 
spectacular plays of the period, The Spanish Tragedy 
and Tamburlaine. After being discharged from the 
goldsmith’s service because of laziness, he conspires 
with Security, a usurer, to obtain the inherited land 
of Gertrude. As subtle and cunning as a gallant, Quick- 
silver knows just where to appeal to Gertrude, and 


*8 Chittizens, i.e., citizens. Cf. in Marston’s What you Will, 
1607, Celia, the daughter of a merchant. 


** Henry IV, Part 1, Act 3, sc. 1. Hotspur tells his wife, 
Kate, to leave off such expressions as these, for they sound like 
oaths from the “base artisans.” 

1° Henry IV, Part 2, Act 3, sc. 3. Mistress Quickly says 
these words. 


SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 107 


persuades her with the promise of a fine new gown to 
sign a deed giving over her land. 


Sir Petronel, who passes for a knight, agrees to 
marry Gertrude and take her to his castle. She is 
easily persuaded to ride in a coach (the object of her 
heart’s desire) to her knight’s castle. She is doomed 
to disappointment, however, for the supposed knight 
is on another adventure. She soon realizes that her 
knight and his famous castle are imaginary, and wails 
over the decay of chivalry.** She is so hard pressed 
that she is even willing to sell her ladyship, and returns 
to her father, the goldsmith, who receives her reluc- 
tantly. 


Meanwhile, Quicksilven and Petronel have wild 
schemes about taking a trip to Virginia on a search 
for gold. Quicksilver steals articles from Touchstone, 
the goldsmith, in order that they may be provided for 
the voyage. They squander their money, are ship- 
wrecked, and later arrested. In prison Quicksilver 
recites the ballad of Mannington whose fall resembles 
his own. Golding, the industrious apprentice and 
former fellow of Quicksilver’s, now an alderman’s 
deputy, is the magistrate over the two prodigals, but 
acts leniently, and soon releases them. The play con- 
cludes with a general reconciliation. 


Certain works of a similar nature but more tragic 
in outcome may be briefly considered. A Warning for 


1° Cf. a story by Rowlands in Good News and Bad News, 1622. 
A citizen’s wife marries a knight in order to become ‘‘madam’d, 
worship’d, ladifide,”’ and to ride in a coach. Her knight getting 
in debt, she is reduced to beggary. 

Cf. the ballads, The Slowmen of London, D’Urfey’s Pills, vol. 6,. 
p. 98; and Perkin in a Coal Sack, in which a collier’s wife desires. 
a coach. D’Urfey’s Pills, vol. 6, p. 254. 


108 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


Faire Women, 1599,*" is one of several domestic trage- 
dies concerned with craftsmen. Anne Saunders, the 
heroine and wife of the merchant-tailor, is the typically 
ambitious wife of an artisan. 


Anne desires more money for fine clothing than her 
husband is willing to give. Mistress Drury, a fortune- 
teller, takes advantage of Anne’s anger at her husband; 
and working on her superstitions, prophesies that she 
will be a widow and a happy one: 


A gentleman, my girl, must be the next, 

A gallant fellow, one that is beloved, 

Of great estates, "Tis plainly figured here,**® 
And this is called, the Ladder of Promotion. 
PORE Cag cteeenet the next 

Shall keep you in your hood and gown of silk, 
And when you stir abroad ride in your coach, 
And have your dozen men all in a livery, 

To wait upon you.*® 


Fascinated by this vivid prophecy, and soothed into 
thinking that fate absolves human responsibility, Anne 
comes to believe that it is God’s will that her husband 
must die, and, therefore, has she not a right to profit 
by it? She is now ready to condone the murder of her 
husband by Captain Browne, her paramour. She is 
executed, together with him and his accomplices. 


The story of Jane Shore, as it is given in Part 1 
of Heywood’s King Edward IV, printed in 1600,” 
might also be called appropriately A Warning for Fair 
Women. It is concerned not only with a fair woman, 


*7 R. Simpson’s School of Shakespeare, vol. 2. 

*§ Lines 635-638. 

7° Lines 649-653. 

2° It is in volume 1 of the 1874 edition of Heywood’s works. 


SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 109 


but also with a fair woman who works in her husband’s 
shop. This situation is a favorite one with the later 
dramatists, who often show the way in which this 
frequently builds up a craftsman’s trade by attracting | 
customers to his shop, and how it also often results 
in licentiousness and marital infidelity.21 This play 
represents both results of the attractive wife used 
partly as a worker and partly as a fascinating orna- 
ment in the shop. 


The theme, which has been considered before, deals 
with Jane Shore, the wife of Matthew Shore, a gold- 
smith, her amours with King Edward IV, her power 
in court, and her downfall and disgrace after the 
latter’s death. It will not be treated fully here; but 
something will be said about Jane’s waiting on the 
king, who poses as a customer;”? inasmuch as there 
is interweaving of the details of the craft with the 
romantic story.’ 

King Edward IV, dressed as an ordinary man, enters 


21 Instances are in Middleton’s Family of Love and Field’s 
Amends for Ladies, printed in 1618. In the latter play Seldom 
and his beautiful wife work in a shop. The wife is subjected 
to many temptations. An allusion to the purpose of the fair 
wife in the shop is in the words of Lord Proudly to Seldom: 

“Did not I set thee up, 
Having no stock but thy shop and fair wife?” 
Act 4, se. 3. 


“ ..thy shops with pretty wenches swarm, 
Which for thy custome are a kinde of charme 
To idle gallants.” 

From Pasquils Palinodia, 1619. 

Grosart’s Occasional Issues, vol. 5, p. 141. 

*2 Heywood owes something here to Drayton’s treatment of 
the theme in Edward IV to Jane Shore, one of his Heroical 
Epistles, 1597. 

23 As has been said before, there are few such cases outside 
of the novels of Deloney, and some of the plays of Dekker. 


110 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


the shop, describing to himself Jane’s beauty in terms 
of jewels, such as diamonds, the description being 
suggested by the jewelry in the shop. 


JANE. What would you buy, sir, that you look on here? 

KinG. Your fairest jewel, be it not too dear. 
First how this sapphire, Mistress, that 
you wear? 

MANES AC rebels if some lapidary had the stone, 
more would not buy it than I can demand. 
’Tis as well set, I think, as ere ye saw. 

KInG. ’Tis set, indeed upon the fairest hand 
that e’er I saw. 

JANE. You are disposed to jest. But for value 
his maiestie might wear it. 

Kine. Might he, ifaith? 

JANE. Sir, tis the ring I mean. 

KinG. I meant the hand.** 


Jane says that the king looks like a chapman, as her 
unloving husband was. The king reveals himself to 
Jane, and offers his love, but she does not yield to 
him then.” 

The irony and dramatic foreshadowing is further 
intensified by the entrance of Shore himself. This keen 
salesman interprets their subdued conversation into a 
haggling over the price of some article, and thinks that 
he can persuade the king to buy more easily than his 
wife can. The king, continuing, says: 


Youle not be offered fairlier I beleeve. 
JANE. Indeed, you offer like a gentleman; 

But yet the jewell will not so be left. 
SHORE. Sir, if you bid not too much under-foot, 

I’ll drive the bargain twixt you and my wife. 


74 Pages 64 and 65. 75 Page 66. 


SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 111 


KinG. (aside) Alas, good Shore, myself dare answer No. 
Nothing can make thee such a jewell foregoe. 
She saith you shall be too much loser by it. 
SHORE. See in the row, then, if you can speede 
better. 


Matthew Shore is discontented on seeing that it is the 
king, and becomes suspicious of his motive. 


Keep we our treasure secret, yet so fond 
As set so rich a beauty as this is 
In the wide view of every gazer’s eye?’® 


Jane ponders, but eventually accepts the king’s pro- 
posal, and becomes his paramour. She is partly per- 
suaded by Mistress Blague, a neighbor, who pictures 
vividly to Jane the sovereignty and renown that she 
will have in court. 

From several ballads on the subject of Jane Shore 
one that may be briefly considered is The Woeful 
Lamentation of Jane Shore, a goldsmith’s Wife in 
London, sometime King Edward the Fourths Concu- 
bine in two parts.”” Tragic, moral, romantic, poetic 
(sung to the tune of Live with me), it has realism as 
to the goldsmith’s craft, and illustrates powerfully the 
aspiration of a craftswoman to nobility. 

Matthew Shore, the goldsmith, describes Jane’s cir- 
cumstances as his wife, before she had committed 
adultery with the king: 


No London Dame, nor merchant’s Wife, 
Did lead so sweet and pleasant life. 


2¢ Page 68. 

27 Phillips’ Old Ballads, vol. 1, p. 145. Other ballads dealing 
with her are Deloney’s Lamentation of Shore’s Wife and a 
burlesque called King Edward and Jane Shore. 


112 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


Thou hadst both gold and silver store, 
He describes how in Turkey he 


set thy Picture there in gold, 
For Kings and Princes to behold.** 


Thus it was that Jane’s parents had married her 
while she was young to one of the richest representa- 
tives of a wealthy and honorable craft. But is Jane 
satisfied? She has wealth and dignity, but no love for 
her husband. Exhibited by him in his shop to attract 
customers, her great beauty naturally attracts many 
highborn admirers. 


If Rosamond that was so fair, 

Had cause her sorrows to declare; 
Then let Jane Shore with sorrow sing, 
That was beloved of a King. 

Then wanton wives in time amend, 
For Love and Beauty will have end.’® 


In Maiden years my Beauty bright 
Was loved dear by Lord and Knight, 
But yet the Love that they required, 
It was not as my Friends desir’d. 


ceeeeevoeeoeveepeeeeereeeesveeeree eee ee eevee 


To Matthew Shore I was a Wife, 
Till Lust brought Ruin to my life, 
And then my life I lewdly spent, 
Which makes my Soul for to lament. 


In Lombard street I once did dwell, 
As London yet can witness well, 
Where many gallants did behold 


?8 These quotations are from Part 2 of the ballad, Roxburghe 
Ballads, vol. 2, p. 115. 


*® The last two lines of this stanza form the refrain. 


SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 113 


My Beauty in a Shop of gold.*° 


At last my name in Court did ring 
Into the Ears of England’s King, 

Who came and lik’d, and love requir’d, 
But I made coy what he desir’d: 


Yet mistress Blague, a Neighbour near, 
Whose Friendship I esteemed dear, 
Did say, Jt is a gallant thing 

To be beloved of a King.*’ 


osreeeoereeeer eevee ee eee eee eee e eevee eee 


So it is that Jane Shore yields to the temptation 
of riches and fame. Advanced to high power by the 
king, she is philanthropic and honored. After King 
Edward IV dies, his successor, Richard ITI, forces Jane 
to do public penance as a whore. 

Massinger’s City Madam, 1632, also presents trouble 
brought to bear upon city women and apprentices who 
are dissatisfied with their social station. The wife and 
daughters, Anne and Mary, of Sir John Frugal, a 
prosperous merchant, have “hopes above their birth”’ 
of becoming countesses. Their dress is in harmony 
with these anticipations; they wear, moreover, mirrors 
at their girdles. Superstitious as many such uncultured 
people are, they have a star-gazer study their fortunes 
for them. These women show an advance’ over the 
aspirations even of Gertrude in Hastward Hoe. She 
desired to have a coach, to marry a knight, and thus 

°° Note the frequency with which gold is mentioned. This 
applies also to Part 2. 

°* Heywood in Edward IV, Part 1, 1874 ed., vol. 1, p. 75, 
similarly depicts the fascination that court life has for Jane 
Shore and for people of her class. These are the words of 
mistress Blague: 


“Now mistress Shore, bethink ye what to do, 
Such suitors come not every day to woo.” 


114 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


be called ‘‘lady.”” These daughters in The City Madam 
even go so far as to specify the kind of coach, the kind 
of cooks, French and Italian, and they not only wish 
to be called “lady,” but also to have complete sover- 
eignty over their future husbands. Anne wants coaches, 
each drawn by four Flanders mares.?? Mary desires 
even more: she wants the more fashionable country 
sports, large manors, countless cattle, and to have such 
complete power over her husband that she will be 
spoken of as Lady Plenty, and her husband never 
mentioned. 

These proud women, however, are soon humbled, for 
Luke, the brother of Sir John Frugal, gains control 
over John’s goods and forces the women to wear old 
clothes and take subordinate positions as a penalty 
for their affectations. 

Several of Shirley’s plays have fashionable women 
who are more successful than Gertrude in Eastward 
Hoe is in disguising their low descent: they do not 
utter words unconsciously that reveal their former 
associations with the city trades. 

Shirley’s Hyde Park, 1632, is a fair illustration. 
Mistress Bonavent, who is supposed to be the widow 
of a merchant, wishes to marry again.** She does not 
need to desire some of these attributes of wealth as the 
women previously mentioned do; she already has them, 
but is discontented. She has command, attendants, 
jewels, a coach, a livery, a monkey, a squirrel, and a 

*° Flanders mares are very expensive and fashionable animals. 
In Glapthorne’s Wit in a Constable, 1639, Clare, the niece of 
an alderman, despises craftsmen, their dress, manners, etc., and 


she says that she will marry only one who can give her a coach 
and four horses. 


*8 Her husband is in reality still alive. 


SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 115 


tailor of her own. Her fashionable and idle life is 
very different from the industry of the wives depicted 
in Deloney’s fiction. 


We shall now say something about the development 
of the apprentice in the hands of authors, as this, like 
the craftsman’s wife, is a stock figure in the literature. 
In the Middle Ages the rigid system of apprenticeship 
doubtless held many youths in check that would other- 
wise have been led astray. But with the Renaissance, 
emphasis on institutions was superseded by individu- 
alism: the apprentice came to realize his importance 
as a civic and even as a national figure, hence the 
emphasis laid on the warlike and patriotic apprentice 
in all forms of the literature of the period from 
1590-1600 especially.*4 


Interest in battles, armies, processions, and shows, 
fostered by the writings of Deloney, Heywood, and 
Rowley, who appeal to apprentices, leads gradually to 
the apprentices’ indolence and slackness in work, to 
their frequenting of theaters, taverns, and gambling 
houses. 


The best general description of the apprentices of 
shopkeepers and craftsmen, and of their chores and 
amusements is by a late writer, Shirley, in his Honoria 
and Mammon, 1639. Squanderbag compares the life 
of a soldier to that of an apprentice: 


Is not this better than a tedious ’prenticeship, 
Bound by indentures to a shop and drudgery, 

Watching the rats and customers by owl-light? 
Tied to perpetual language of, What lack ye? 


. 54 This theme continues almost until the closing of the theaters 
in scattered works; e. g., Rawlins’ Rebellion, 1639, a rough copy 
of Rowley’s Shoomaker a Gentleman, 1609. 


116 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


Which you pronounce, as ye had been taught, like starlings: 
If any gudgeon bite, to damn your souls 

For less than sixpence in the pound? Oh base! 

Your glittering shoes, long graces, and short meals, 
Expecting but the comfortable hour 

Of eight o’clock, and the hot pippin-pies, 

To wake your mouth up? All the day not suffered 
To air yourselves, unless your minikin mistress 
Command you to attend her to a christ’ning, 

To bring ‘home plams, oc. i. 550 saute stele ee ee 

You have some festivals, I confess, but when 

They happen, you run wild to the next village, 
Conspire a knot, and club your groats a-piece 

For cream and prunes, not daring to be drunk; 
Nothing of honour done. Now you are gentlemen, 
And in capacity to be all commanders, 

If you dare fight.*°® 


We have riotous and extravagant apprentices in 
several plays, Hastward Hoe, 1605, being a good illus- 
tration. Quicksilver, the goldsmith’s apprentice of this 
play, wears gay clothes and a sword, visits theaters 
and quotes freely from the more spectacular and popu- 
lar plays of the period. He is dishonest, having learned 
much trickery in the goldsmith’s craft, trickery which 
he can easily employ anywhere. He also understands 
well the nature of others, and deceives Gertrude, his 
master’s daughter, by working on her childish desire 
for fine clothes and a coach. In the same play there is 
an industrious fellow-apprentice of Quicksilver called 
Golding, who by perseverance and honesty gradually 
wins the good will of his master and becomes an alder- 
man’s deputy and magistrate. 

Just as the ballad on Jane Shore serves as a warning 
to the craftsman’s wife who is discontented with her 


Ta CU etek: 


SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN | 117 


station in life, so also certain ballads are directed 
against the wayward apprentice. An excellent Ballad 
of George Barnwell** describes a thievish, lustful, and 
murderous apprentice. It has a moral and tragic note, 
as has also George Lillo’s tragedy, George Barnwell, 
or the London Merchant, 1731. This ballad was often 
used aS a warning to apprentices. Like the ballad on 
Jane Shore, the present one is forcible and dramatic 
partly because of its being told in the first person. 
George, the apprentice, tells how he was tempted by 
a harlot to steal his master’s money and run away. 
Fascinated by her, he is led to murder his master and 
rich uncle for their money. After the money is all 
spent, the harlot deserts him. Both culprits are caught 
and sentenced to execution. 


The next ballad to be considered has more realistic 
touches as to the craft of the apprentice; i. e., that of 
a goldsmith. It is called A Ballad, and dated 1576, in 
the Stationer’s Company.*? George Mannington diso- 
beys the statutes against gorgeous attire of appren- 
tices. After he is arrested for his misdeeds, he sings 
as follows: 


I had a master good and kinde, 

That would have wrought me to his minde. 

False mettall of good manners I 

Did daily coyne unlawfully. ‘ 


sreeceevereeeeoeereeeees eee eevee eveereeer eee e eee 


Now cried I, Touch-stone,** touch me still, 


*¢ Percy Socy. Pub., vol. 1, p. 35. It is in two parts. 
*7 Percy Socy. Pub., vol. 1, p. 51. 


78 Touch-stone is his master. A touchstone is also a stone 
used by goldsmiths to test the purity of gold and silver. Note 
the number of technical expressions. 


118 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 
And make me current by thy skill. 


Farewell, Cheapside, farewell, sweet trade 
Of goldsmiths all, that never shall fade, 
Farewell, dear fellow prentices all, 

And be you warned by my fall. 

Shun usurer’s bonds etc.*® 


Cooke’s Greenes tu Quoque, 1614,* and Mayne’s City 
Match, 1639, depict extravagant and riotous appren- 
tices. In the former, Spendall, a mercer’s apprentice, 
is suddenly made master of the shop, on his master’s 
being knighted. Spendall is carried away by his un- 
expected advance, and has an expectation that he will 
some day become Lord Mayor: 


A Lord? by this light, I do not think but to be Lord Mayor 
of London before I die, and have three pageants carried before 
me, besides a ship and an unicorn. Prentices may pray for that 
time; for, whenever it happens, I will make another Shrove 
Tuesday for them.** 


He becomes extravagant, squandering his money on 
dice games, and is finally arrested for his extravagance. 
In The City Match, Plotwell, a grocer’s apprentice, is 
lured from his trade by Templars to see an extravagant 
lady. He is easily led to despise his trade on being 
called ‘‘base mechanic,’’*? and becomes riotous. In both 


*° This alludes to the custom of goldsmiths, as well as of 
several richer types of craftsmen, of lending out money on 
usury. 

These verses are appropriately read by Quicksilver, the gold- 
smith’s riotous apprentice in Hastward Hoe, as he is in prison 
for debt and misdeeds. 

*° The date of writing is uncertain. It is in Dodsley’s Old 
English Plays, vol. 7. 

*t Page 19. 

TAUCK (Ly sBIes ae 


SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 119 


of these plays a keen interest is shown by craftsmen 
in pageants and spectacles. 

Massinger’s City Madam, 1632, shows some variation 
in the delineation of apprentices from that in Kastward 
Hoe. As in the two preceding plays, the two appren- 
tices, Goldwire and Tradewell, are bound, not to a 
mean shopkeeper, but to a great speculating merchant, 
Sir John Frugal. They are, moreover, sons of gentle- 
men, a fact which increases their pride. They are, 
therefore, not only interested in fine clothes, but also 
in the larger aspects of nobility, such as the possession 
of estates. In talking of Frugal’s many ventures, they 
mention his buying of manors. Luke Frugal, the mer- 
chant’s brother, appealing to the respectable caste of 
the apprentices, and holding out to them the joy of 
going in a coach to Brentford, of having attendants, 
and of wearing the attire of gallants, tempts them to 
become rich by stealing from their master’s wealth of 
which they are stewards: 

Are you Gentlemen born, yet have no gallant Tincture 
Of Gentry in you? you are no mechanicks, 

Nor serve some needy Shop-keeper, who surveys 
His Every-day-takings.** 

After these apprentices have embezzled from their 
master, Luke, who is a great hypocrite, has them ar- 
rested on a charge of conspiracy against his brother. 
To their complaining fathers he says that masters 
never prospered since gentlemen’s sons became appren- 
tices, for they are too frequently at tennis courts and 
ordinaries.** 


cect 2, sc. 1. 
** Act 5, sc. 1. As does Massinger’s New Way to Pay Old 
Debts, this play shows the enmity between the noble born and 


the self-made man. 


120 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


Writers of some importance in this treatment of 
low born city people who have attained social eminence 
are James Shirley and Richard Brome, a follower of 
Jonson. In their treatment of such people who are or 
have been artisans or are at least relatives of artisans, 
they frequently represent them as having successfully 
cast off their crude manners of the city artisans. They 
are thus representing artisans who seem very dissimilar 
to those represented by Deloney, Dekker, Heywood, or 
Rowley. 


Brome’s New Academy, 1658, shows more clearly 
than any play thus far considered the advance of the 
apprentices over their dependent positions as described 
in earlier works, and illustrates well the intermarrying 
between the highborn and the low born. 


Cash, an apprentice to a successful merchant, Mat- 
chill, is frequently at feasts and revels, and dresses in 
silver lace and satin. In this finery he appears at 
dances with gallants, some of whom are in debt to 
his own master. Cash is an excellent picture of an 
apprentice, but one of a special kind, entirely unlike 
the unsophisticated ones of earlier writers such as 
Deloney and Dekker. Strigood differentiates him from 
the low type of apprentice who goes with his sweet- 
heart to Islington or Hogsden for prunes, cream, 
and ale. 


As for his bravery 
’Tis no new thing with him, I know him of old. 
This sute’s his worst of foure. 
And he’s one 
Of the foure famous Prentices o’ th’ time. 
None of the Cream and Cake-boys, nor of those, 
That gall their hands with..... , or their cat-sticks, 


SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 121 


For white-pots, pudding-pies, stew’d prunes, and Tansies. 
To feast their Titts at Islington or Hogsden. 

But haunts the famous Ordinaries o’ th® time, 

Where the best chear, best game, best company are frequent. 
Lords call him Cousin at the Bowling Green; 

And the great Tennis-Court.** 


Certain it is that Cash does not reveal by his talk or 
actions that he is an apprentice. Cash is, moreover, a 
man of the world, with a ready action by which to 
extricate himself when he is involved in any suspicion 
of a scandal. 

- After long attempts to imitate fashionable society, 
it seems that the apprentices and city women as de- 
picted by Shirley and Brome have succeeded in losing 
their former crudeness. 

Much has already been said, especially in connection 
with the Lord Mayor Show, about the admiration that 
artisans had for dramatic and pageantic spectacles. 
They took a keen interest in the display of fine clothing, 
processions, or emotions. A well known illustration of 
this is in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, 
1594-5. Six craftsmen: Quince, a carpenter; Snug, a 
joiner; Bottom, a weaver; Flute, a bellows-mender ; 
Snout, a tinker; and Starveling, a tailor, present an 
interlude on the wedding night of Duke Theseus of 
Athens. Their childish clumsiness and love of imitation 
are well represented. The juxtaposition of realism and 
pseudo-romanticism which lacks the necessary imagi- 
nation on the part of the artisans is one source of 
the humor. Bottom wants to be Pyramus, Thisbe, and 
the lion, as he likes to roar. Each actor clumsily ex- 

*5 Act 3, sc. 2. There are references here to the servile task 


that apprentices of the meaner trades were obliged to do, if they 
wished spending money. 


122 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


plains his part, having little knowledge of stage con- 
ventions, and blunders on certain words; e. g., Pyramus 
calls ‘‘Ninus’ tomb” “‘Ninny’s tomb.’’*¢ 

In several of Jonson’s plays are criticisms of the 
clumsy theatrical performances of amateurs. In his 
Tale of a Tub, 1633, To-Pan, a tinker, Medlay, a cooper, 
and Clay, a tile-maker, take part in a play. Medlay, the 
original and self-centered cooper who designs the 
masque, claims to have upon his rule the just propor- 
tions of a knight or squire.*7 In Jonson’s Bartholomew 
Fair, 1614, there is a puppet show*® representing the 
story of Hero and Leander. Leander is a dyer’s son 
in Puddle-Wharf. The story of Damon and Pythias 
is confused with this, and the ghost of Dionysius ap- 
pears on the stage. Humor is furnished by the futile 
attempts of Busy, the Puritan baker, to break up 
the show. 

A favorite subject of craftsmen for presentation on 
the stage is knight-errantry and patriotism, especially 
when the heroes of such romances are from the crafts- 
men’sown ranks. Heywood’s Four Prentices of London, 
1600 ¢., is a good illustration of this type, a type 
which meets with ridicule in the hands of Beaumont 
and Fletcher and Jonson. 

The best satire on craftsmen’s thirsting for military 
renown is Beaumont and Fletcher’s Knight of the 
Burning Pestle, 1611. A citizen is going to have some- 
thing represented on the stage in honor of his grocer’s 
trade. At his wife’s suggestion, who also takes keen 
interest in it, he will have a hero kill a lion with a 
pestle. Ralph, his apprentice, is given the chief part, 


Ot RARD Op BCs t. “" Act 4) secre 
ey ACE. Deer. 


SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 1238 


and because of his grocer’s trade he calls himself the 
“Knight of the Burning Pestle.” One apprentice is his 
dwarf; another is his squire. He constantly imitates 
the language of chivalry; e.g., that of Palmerin, an 
old chivalric romance, and quotes Hotspur’s speech 
about honor in Henry IV, Part 1.4° Although Ralph 
has pledged himself to defend Mistress Merrythought, 
who is in trouble, he runs away as soon as his pestle 
has been seized. He goes to fight against a giant, 
Barbarossa,*° who turns out to be only a barber. Ralph 
knocks him down, and frees his prisoners, who have 
been tortured in various ways by the barber’s quack 
surgery. One has had stinging powder applied to cure 
the itch; another has had the gristle of his nose cut 
off; others are kept in a hot tub as a cure for syphilis. 
Ralph falls in love with Susan, a cobbler’s maid, who 
has inspired him to do these deeds of arms. His master 
is so pleased with his performances that he will make 
him next year the captain of the Lord Mayor’s barge. 

In Shirley’s interlude, A Contention for Honor and 
Riches, 1633, and in his morality, Honoria and Mam- 
mon, 1659, are satirical thrusts at the Lord Mayor’s 
Show. In the former,*! Clod, a country fellow, ridicules 
civic officers, shop-keepers, and Lord Mayor Shows 
with ships swimming upon men’s shoulders. 

Two ballads among others which satirize the Lord 
Mayor’s Show are Oh London is a fine Town* and 

*° Other instances of the burlesque on tales of chivalry are in 


the character of Puntarvolo in Hvery Man Out of his Humor 
and in Petronel in Eastward Hoe. 


Pact) 6, eC. 4. 
°? Scene -1. 
52 D’Urfey’s Pills to Purge Melancholy, vol. 4, p. 40. 


124 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


Upon my Lord Maior’s Day, being put off by reason 
of the Plague.** In the latter the mayor is “‘forbad to 
goe a feasting in his scarlet gown.” 


Nor shall they hear the players tall, 
Who mounted on some mighty whale, 
Swim with him through Cheapside. 


Craftsmen welcome any occasion for displaying 
spectacular things, and are most pleased by the presen- 
tation of something exciting. In Tatham’s play, The 
Rump, 1660, apprentices externalize their dissatisfac- 
tion with the Rump Parliament by burning rumps of 
mutton in public. In the Fishmongers’ Lord Mayor 
Shows, Sir William Walworth, former Mayor and 
fishmonger, frequently appears, bearing the head of 
the rebel, Wat Tyler, whom he had slain. In Mark 
Antony’s speech to the mob in Julius Caesar, he works 
upon the excitability of those present, increasing their 
pity by showing the rent mantle of Caesar and then 
Caesar’s own bloody corpse, stabbed in several places. 

Indeed, Shakespeare, who will be considered more 
fully later, is as excellent as any other writer in his 
delineation of craftsmen in crowds, and their love of 
sights. Although the craftsmen in literature like most 
of all to see represented on the stage military exploits 
of their own members, they also glorify a military 
hero apart from their ranks if he offers a sufficiently 
spectacular career. Thus, in Julius Caesar, 1599, the 
interest of the fickle mob (a fair part of which is 
composed of artisans) is centered on three military 
heroes successively, Pompey, Caesar, and Brutus, in 
honor of whom they wish to give pageants and spec- 


5% Percy Socy., vol. 1, p. 28. 


SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 125 


tacles.** In Coriolanus, 1609, it is Coriolanus’ stubborn 
and tactless refusal to cater to the craftsmen’s extreme 
love of a spectacle and dramatic speech, that brings 
about the tragedy. In Antony and Cleopatra, 1607-8, 
Cleopatra fears that the base “‘mechanic slaves” will 
stage her tragic fall, and perhaps turn it into a vulgar 
comedy.*® 


Thou, an Egyptian puppet, shalt be shown 

In Rome, as well as I: mechanic slaves, 

With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers, shall 
Uplift us to the view; in their thick breaths, 
Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded, 
and forced to drink their vapour. 


Meese hits «sss eats SAUCY VLICLOTS 

Will catch at us, like strumpets; and scald rhymers 
Ballad us out o’ tune: the quick comedians 
Extemporally will stage us, and present 

Our Alexandrian revels; Antony 

Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see 
Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness 

I’ the posture of a whore.” 


In a previous chapter much has been said about 
works that praise craftsmen in battle. There are, 
however, reactions in the period of James I and 
Charles I to this adulation of craftsmen in battle. Two 
works that present citizens in general as desiring a 
disreputable peace rather than a settling of the trouble 
by fighting are Cartwright’s The Siege, acted before 

°* In the three Roman plays, the mob is said to be composed 
largely of Roman artisans, but they have the traits of English 
ones. 

5° Act 5, sc. 2. Cleopatra says these words to Iras. 


°° Boy actors took the roles of women in Pre-Restoration 
drama. 


126 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


16438,°7 and Shakespeare’s King John, 1593. Several 
miscellaneous works represent craftsmen as _ ridicu- 
lous in their attempts at fighting. Thus, in Mayne’s 
Amorous War, 1648, the Bithynian craftsmen, in fight- 
ing against Thrace, arm themselves with appropriate 
weapons: butchers with cleavers, tailors with yards 
and bodkins, and shoemakers. with awls.** They are 
clumsy and unorganized when it comes to fighting. In 
Beaumont and Fletcher’s Philaster, the captain exhorts 
the citizens to leave their base crafts and to fight 
nobly; i.e., even though they are craftsmen.*® In The 
Famous Victories of Henry V and in Rowley’s Shoo- 
maker a Gentleman® the cobbler is a cowardly type 
of fighter. A Larum for London, printed in 1602, and 
The Famous History of the Life and Death of Captain 
Thomas Stukeley, printed in 1605, bring out the fact 
that trained soldiers are more successful fighters than 
citizens or craftsmen. In A Larum for London, the 
citizens with poor success try to beat back the opposing 
Spaniards. 


We are undone for want of discipline.** 
Craftsmen are frequently represented as the leaders 


*" Printed for H. Moseley, 1651. 

PACE EC a. 

* Act. 6, se. 1: 

°° This play has been considered carefully in the preceding 
chapter. The prince, Crispianus, who is for a time apprentice 
to a shoemaker, fights nobly; Barnaby, the journeyman, on the 
other hand, is a cowardly type of soldier. 

** R. Simpson’s School of Shakespeare, vol. 1. Stukeley was 
a rich clothier’s son, according to a ballad on him. According 
to Deloney’s Gentle Craft, Part 2, Stukeley is several times 
defeated by Peachy, a shoemaker. 

** Malone Society Reprints, 1913. 

*> Line 6380. 


SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 127 


or members of popular uprisings. Hardly any of these 
works are flattering to craftsmen, for they are repre- 
sented here as lacking in bravery, organization, and 
decision. In The Life and Death of Jack Straw, 1593, 
the artisan-soldiers are alluded to thus: 


Be none but tilers, thatchers, millers, and such like, 
That in their lives did never come in field.** 


In Woodstock a butcher shows great discontent with 
the existing government; and in Shirley’s Arcadia, 
1640, Thumb, a miller, puts himself at the head of 
the rebels, but is lacking when it comes to actual 
fighting. 

A play of this type that delineates craftsmen with 
realism is Ford’s Perkin Warbeck, printed in 1634. 
The First Part of the Contention of the two famous 
Houses of Yorke and Lancaster, 1590; and Shakes- 
peare’s Henry VI, Part 2, 1590-2, which follows the 
Contention in the parts that deal with the artisan-rebel, 
Jack Cade, are other instances. 

The first of these plays represents Perkin as sup- 
ported in his uprising by Heron, a bankrupt mercer; 
John a Water, the mayor of Cork; Skelton, a tailor; 
and Astley, a scrivener. Heron and Skelton are indi- 
vidualized well. Heron had aspired to be “a viscount 
at least,” even when he traded but in remnants.*’ 
Skelton’s references to terms from his own trade for 
metaphors is interesting. 


** Dodsley’s Old English Plays, vol. 5. 

Ne ea 

** Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespeare Gesellschaft, 1899. 
*7 Act 2, sc. 3, p. 153, Dyce edition. 


128 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


AG ENE he that threads his needle with the sharp eyes of in- 
dustry shall in time go through-stitch with the new suit of 
preferment.** 


Skelton also speaks of the pressing-iron of reproach. 

These artisans are far from brave: when captured, 
they quail before King Henry VII, in strong contrast 
to Warbeck, who conducts himself throughout the play 
with fearless and dignified demeanor. 

There is more of the element of satire in The First 
Part of the Contention etc. and in Shakespeare’s 
Henry VI, Part 2. In the Contention® are several 
realistic touches on craft. An illustration apart from 
the Jack Cade rebellion is the quarrel between an 
armorer and his apprentice, a story which is paralleled 
in Shakespeare’s play.”° 

Several apprentices speak of Cade, the leader of 
the rebels, as follows: 


GEORGE. Jack Cade the Diar’* of Ashford here, 
He means to turne this land, and set a new nap on it. 
NICK. I marry he had need so, for ’tis growne threedbare... 
Georce. I warrant thee, thou shalt never see a Lord weare a 
leather aperne nowadaies. 
NICK. But sirrha, who comes more beside Jacke Cade? 
Grorcre. Why theres Dicke the Butcher, and Robin the Sadler, 
and Will etc., and we must all be Lords or squires, as 
soone as Jacke Cade is King.** 


Cade boasts about his bravery, asserts that his fa- 
ther was a Mortemer, and calls himself Lord Mortemer. 
The artisans nearby whisper to one another that Cade’s 


*ec Act 2, se. (3; p. 154: 

°° Facsimile Text. 

AP ACUI eG. hoe 

72 “Diar;” i.e, dyer. 

72 In Henry VI also the artisans are well portrayed. 


SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 129 


father was a bricklayer, and that his mother was the 
daughter of a peddler. 

Trying to gain the support of a rabble composed 
partly of artisans, Cade appeals to them in various 
ways; e.g., he endows a butcher with greater trade 
privileges than he has had hitherto, promises them all 
plenty of beer, and knights himself and them. Cruel 
and destructive, he has a clerk hanged because he can 
write (reading or writing being accomplishments hate- 
ful to Cade); and has London Bridge burned. Like 
Leyden, the tailor who leads the Munster rebels,*? Cade 
is socialistic and defends stealing. According to him, 
wives are common property. Another point of resem- 
blance between Cade’s situation and Leyden’s is that 
Cade nearly starves, and lives on herbs. 

This rebel has no personality or leadership. The 
fragments of his army, like himself, lack organizing 
power, and vacillate between Cade and his more vic- 
torious opponent, Clifford. Cade is finally killed by 
one of his own group, Eyden, who is desirous of obtain- 
ing knighthood and the thousand crowns offered for 
Cade’s head. 

Something has already been seen in these previously 
mentioned works about the inconsistency of mobs, 
composed to an extent of artisans. Sir Thomas More, 
1590, contains a good picture of a mob, the hatred of 
which is directed especially against foreign merchants 
and artisans who displace English craftsmen.’* There 
is a vivid presentation of apprentices, armed with 
clubs,7> who burn the houses of foreigners and release 

78 This is well satirized in Rowland’s Hells Broke Loose. 

74 Shakespeare Socy., vol. 3; Dyce edition, 1844. The play 


borrows something from Hall’s Chronicle, fol. 59 (b), ed. 1548. 
"® Page 17. 


130 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


the prisoners. In their wild clamor about their griev- 
ances, they lack general and wholehearted nationality, 
are greatly swayed by personal prejudices and private 
desires. An instance is in the desire of Doll, the wife 
of a carpenter, to hear Sir Thomas More speak: 


Sanwa a made my brother Arthur Watchins Seriant 
Safes yeoman: lets heare Shreeve More.** 


Like the members of the mob in Julius Caesar, these 
are appeased by More’s eloquent and tactful speech, 
which upholds the divine right of kings, condemns 
rebellion, and appeals to the emotion rather than to 
the reason of the listeners. 

A ballad which, like the play just described, deals 
with the hatred of English toward foreign merchants 
or artisans is The Story of Ill May-Day in the time 
of King Henry VIII.” It tells of the uprising of English 
artisans on May-eve, 1517, against foreigners who 
monopolized their trade. The rebels free those who 
have been imprisoned for hostility to foreigners. 

In the treatment of artisans as members of a mob, 
rather than as individuals, Shakespeare is supreme. 
Although he does not deny that the citizen or artisan 
is of some importance in the state (as is shown by 
the fact that Bolingbroke, afterwards King Henry IV, 
Gloster, and Mark Antony seek the support of the 
citizens or mayor), he shows (following the dramatic 
tradition of his time) little admiration or sympathy 
for the laboring man en masse. He usually emphasizes 
the meaner qualities of artificers: susceptibility to 
flattery, fickleness, inconsistency, avarice, and craving 


** Page 26, line 17. 
*7 Evans’ Old Ballads, vol. 3, p. 15. 


SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 131 


for social recognition by great ones. Hence, in Romeo 
and Juliet, 1594-5,"* citizens with clubs join in the fray 
between the servants of the house of Montague and 
the house of Capulet. It is mainly because these citizens 
like to get into a quarrel; some of them show no prefer- 
ence for either house. In King Henry VIII, likewise, 
1612, the noisiness of apprentices and their readiness 
to decide quarrels by the use of clubs and stones are 
emphasized.7° The porter comments on the fact that 
these are the noisy youths so boisterous in playhouses. 

More interesting for our study is Shakespeare’s 
treatment of the artisan as related to nobility or roy- 
alty. Much has been already said about the desire of 
artisans for recognition by knights or kings. The Lord 
Mayor’s Show, as beforesaid, frequently illustrates 
this; e. g., in the Merchant-Taylors’ Show, great pride 
is manifested in the fact that many kings and nobles 
were free of that company. The presentation by arti- 
sans of plays and pageants on royal occasions is brought 
out in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and 
Henry VIITI®’ respectively. In the latter play, the 
citizens are said to take great interest in the coronation 
ceremony of Queen Anne, and to prepare pageants for 
the occasion. 

Attention will be given to several plays of Shakes- 
peare in which demagogues obtain popularity through 
appealing by promises, courtesy, flattery, etc., to mobs 
consisting in large measure of craftsmen. 

We shall first consider Richard IT, 1595. Bolingbroke, 
the cousin of Richard II, whom the king has banished, 
understands well the various subtle arts by which he 


"* Act 1, se. 1. TA Cheat: SOx ties 
tie CUP SOnCk, 


132 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


may obtain the friendship of the commons. Taking 
advantage of the king’s unpopularity, partly due to the 
heavy taxation and social unrest of the period, Boling- 
broke represents himself as the special friend of the 
common people: the trading and working classes. He 
therefore misses no opportunity of smirking at them 
and showing them various courtesies. The king, after 
banishing Bolingbroke, describes him as follows: 


Ourself and Bushy, Bagot here and Green 
Observed his courtship to the common people; 
How he did seem to dive into their hearts 

With humble and familiar courtesy, 

What reverence he did throw away on slaves, 
Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles 
And patient underbearing of his fortune, 

As ’twere to banish their affects with him. 

Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench; 

A brace of draymen bid God speed him well 
And had the tribute of his supple knee, 

With ‘Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends;’ 
As were our England in reversion his, 

And he our subjects’ next degree in hope.*? 


The most excellent pictures of mobs consisting largely 
of artisans are in Julius Caesar, 1599, and Coriolanus, 
1609. 

In Julius Caesar many aspects of the working peo- 
ple’s nature are brought out. Though these are called 
Roman citizens and artificers, they answer well for a 
delineation of English ones. The love of the artisans 
for holidays and spectacles is brought out in the first 


** Act 1, sc. 4, lines 23-36. 

A parallel may be noted in this outcast’s tactful behavior to 
that of the dethroned King Edward IV, as described in Bulwer- 
Lytton’s Last of the Barons. Both of these statesmen appeal 
strongly to the commercial classes. 


SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 133 


scene. In this feast of Lupercal various craftsmen are 
presented; the leader, a shoemaker, one from the 
popular guild of the late 16th century, is especially 
witty. He puns on certain words peculiar to his craft: 
“mend,” “‘sole,’”’ and “awl.” These artisans are assem- 
bled to celebrate Caesar’s triumph. Their fickleness 
and inconsistency are well described by Marullus, the 
tribune. The latter reminds them that they had form- 
erly made as much ceremony and display over Pompey, 
Caesar’s enemy, when Pompey passed in triumphal 
chariot through the Roman streets. Their fickleness 
and love of pomp may also be seen in their wishing 
later to crown and celebrate Brutus, and last of all, 
making even Antony a popular hero.*? In Casca’s story 
of the offering of the crown to Caesar* the undesirable 
qualities of craftsmen are stressed: they have ‘‘chopped 
hands,” “sweaty night-caps,” and ‘‘stinking breath.” 


After the assassination of Caesar, the artisans ex- 
hibit their tendency to settle all things by violence, by 
a club law, as it were.*t Brutus appeals to their nobler 
sentiments by suggesting that they are patriotic free- 
men and not base bondmen, he satisfies them, even 
though he gives no sound explanation as to his reason 
for killing Caesar. They are quieted temporarily with 
the feeling that Caesar was killed because he was 
ambitious, “ambitious” being a word which, as it 

** That some of these craftsmen appear also at Antony’s 
speech seems evident from the fact that he refers to their 
witnessing the offer of the crown to Caesar on the Lupercal. 

Barach 1, -6c,, 2. 

It must be borne in mind, however, that Casca is a sour person, 
tending to belittle whatever he describes. 

** The stage directions do not mention clubs. In Robert Man- ° 


tell’s presentation of the play, however, these citizens are armed 
with clubs, like unruly apprentices. 


134 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


appears later, they do not understand, but vaguely 
suppose has something to do with tyranny. In their 
tendency to furnish a popular hero for any occasion, 
they desire to bring Brutus home with triumph, to give 
him a statue with his ancestors, and (which further 
confirms the fact that they do not understand the 
reason for the assassination) to crown Brutus, the 
assassin of the very Caesar whom they had previously 
wished to celebrate. 

Now that Brutus has left them with a vague idea 
of Caesar’s “‘ambition,” it remains for Antony to dis- 
lodge that attribute of Caesar from their minds. He 
pretends, therefore, in a flattering way, to appeal to 
their reason; but he actually appeals to their emotion, 
avarice, admiration for large estates and for world. 
power. 


He hath brought many captives home to Rome, 
Whose ransom did the general coffers fill. 


What could appeal more forcibly to an excitable crowd 
whose tendency is to glorify military heroes? What 
could appeal more to the hearers’ avarice than the same 
sentence? | 


When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept, 
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff. 


What could appeal more to their sympathy than this 
gentler attribute of the great conqueror, whose ten- 
derness seems to have leaned to just such people as 
themselves? To the uncultured artisans so excited by 
dramatic and spectacular scenes, what could appeal 
more than Antony’s presentation of Caesar’s mantle 
and body and his vivid characterization of each of 


SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 135 


the conspirators cruelly butchering the great national 
demigod ? 

The above words. illustrate how emotional these 
commons are: Antony’s appeal is not to reason or 
judgment. Of the three reasons why Caesar was not 
“ambitious:” 1, that he enriched the country as a 
whole; 2, that he wept for the poor; 3, that he thrice 
refused a crown, only the last has any connection with 
ambition. Moreover, if we take Casca’s words as to 
Caesar’s unwillingness to refuse the crown, it is not 
even an indication, far less a proof, that Caesar was 
not ambitious. 


In Coriolanus, stubborn insistence of craftsmen on 
form and timeworn ceremonies, and Coriolanus’s re- 
fusal to comply are large determining factors in the 
tragedy. The mutinous citizens represent English 
craftsmen. The hungry citizens, armed with clubs, 
threaten the government if they are not fed immedi- 
ately. The tactful Menenius quiets them by his fable 
which represents them as having a definite place in 
the government. Marcius (later Coriolanus) casts 
several aspersions on them, calling them “gnawing 
rats,’’®® describes their fickleness, and their preference 
for a man’s bows and flattery rather than his heart. 
Even to gain the consulship, he does not intend to show 
the commons the many wounds which he has received 


*° That the mob is composed in large part of craftsmen is 
attested to in Coriolanus’ words to his mother: 
“Do not bid me 
Dismiss my soldiers, or capitulate 
Again with Rome’s mechanics.” 
Act 5, sce. 3. 
8° Cf. Shirley’s Doubtful Heiv in which a captain expresses a 
similar attitude toward craftsmen. Act 1. 


136 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


in battle.8? Though craftsmen seem to make a fair 
proportion of the fighting body, Coriolanus is probably 
correct in saying that they are base born cowards,** 
having often deserted in battle. Though he exaggerates 
frequently, he would not be apt to tell an absolute lie. 


Coriolanus is finally persuaded to conform to the 
custom of the commons by showing his wounds and 
saying something to them, a form of procedure which 
he does contemptuously. He is then elected consul. The 
tribunes, however, call the attention of the citizens to 
the scornful way in which Coriolanus had shown his 
wounds, and his sarcastic manner of address.®® The 
artisans” are so exasperated that they withdraw their 
former election of him as consul, and effect his banish- 
ment from the city. 


When the citizens hear that a Volscian invasion, 
partly led by Coriolanus, is threatened, some assert 
that they did not want to banish him. 


These two Roman plays of Shakespeare picture ex- 
cellently well the inability of uncultured artisans (or 
uncultured persons of any kind) to act as statesmen 
or electors of statesmen. Fickle, tending to extol a 
hero at one moment, and to destroy him at the next; 
unreliable, inclined to worship rank rather than prin- 
ciple, the craftsmen in these plays are well pictured as. 


Phen SSCL Ry, 
SPU ACE 2.) 8th os 
da Ws Aap IE | gs 2 
°° That artisans have a large part in this seems evident 
from Menenius’ ironic words to the tribunes regarding their 
unstatesmanlike behavior: 
“You have made fair hands, 
You and your crafts! You have crafted fair!” 
Act 4, se. 6, lines 115-116. 


SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 137 


failures in their attempts to interfere with the govern- 
ment.°? 

Several miscellaneous works describe artisans as 
leaders or members of popular uprisings. In verse 
there is Daniel’s treatment of the Jack Cade rebellion 
in his Civil Wars.*? In prose there are Lodge’s Life and 
Death of William Longbeard, and Rowlands’ Runna- 
gates Race (in his Martin Markall). The following 
satirical prose works of Taylor combine an interest 
in communism with fanatic religious zeal: The Whole 
Life and Progresse of Henry Walker the Iron-monger, 
Jack a Lent, A Tale ina Tub, and A Full and compleat 
Answer Against the Writer of a Tale in a Tub. 

The Munster uprising is treated in the prose work, 
Mock-Mayjesty: or, The Siege of Munster, and Leyden 
is described in Nash’s Unfortunate Traveller; but the 
best satirical treatment is given in Rowlands’ poem, 
Hells Broke Loose, 1605.°* This is such a fine satire 
that it will be briefly discussed. 


* Bulwer-Lytton’s Rienzi also has a good portrait of the lack 
of understanding in artisans. Rienzi, the Roman tribune, in 
improving the condition of the commons, gathers several sup- 
porters of the craftsmen, led by a blacksmith, Cecco del Vecchio. 
They withdraw their support from Rienzi as soon as he is no 
longer able to furnish them with pageants, shows, and holidays. 
As in Coriolanus and Julius Caesar, ceremony and form are 
loved by artisans; e.g., Cecco becomes a confirmed enemy of 
Rienzi because the latter in a procession has not bowed to the 
blacksmith who stood among those looking on. 

Book 9, end of chapter 1. 

The disinclination of artisans to fight or to undergo sacrifices 
is also brought out. 

F. Tupper’s Shakespearean Mob, in “Publications of the 
Modern Language Association,” 1912, is an excellent study of 
the treatment of mobs by Shakespeare and other dramatists 
of his period. 

®? Book 6, stanza 1. 

** Hunterian Club ed., vol. 1. 


138 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


The poem censures German Anabaptists, and typifies 
them in the form of various craftsmen. These wished 
to have plurality of wives, to govern things in their 
own way, and to cheat. John Leyden, a Dutch tailor, 
Tom Mynter, a parish clerk, Knipperdulling, a smith, 
and Crafteing, a joiner, first spread these ideas: 


John Leyden, but a Taylor by his trade, 

Of Munster towne a King would needes be made: 
A Parrish Clarke, a Joyner, and a Smyth, 

His nobles were, whom hee tooke counsell with.’ * 


They capture Munster, and make Leyden king. He 
claims that Adam, like himself, was a tailor (referring 
to the far-fetched story of Adam and Eve’s sewing 
aprons of fig leaves) ; since we are all Adam’s sons, we 
ought to be all kings, and be free from any govern- 
ment. His lack of direction of the uprising, and his 
appeal to the various craftsmen are expressed as 
follows: 


Let’s turne the world cleane upside downe, (mad slaves) 
So to be talk’d of, when were in our graves. 


Brave Knipperdulling, set thy Forge on fire. 

It shall be done this present night (quoth hee,) 
Tom Mynter, leave amen unto the Quier. 

Quoth Tom, I scorne henceforth a Clarke to bee, 
Carnellis, hang thy wooden Joyners trade, 

For Noble-men apeece you shall be made. 


And fellowmates, nobles and Gallants all, 

To Maiestie you must your mindes dispose; 

My Lord Hans Hogg, forsake your Butchers stall. 
Hendrick the Botcher, cease from heeling Hose. 


°* Page 11. 


SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 139 


Classe Chaundler, let your Weick and Tallow lye, 
And Peeter Cobler, cast your old Shooes by.°° 


Their lack of judgment is further ridiculed in their 
rebellion against restrictions as to more than one wife, 
against taxation and penalties of any kind: Since 
animals and fishes do not have to pay taxes, why should 
man? 


What reason is it when the hands have stole, 
To put the Legs into a wodden hole?*® 


Thinking that they shall have permanent possession 
of Munster, they ring bells, For joy a Taylor is become 
a King. Leyden commands the poorer craftsmen, such 
as joiners and smiths, to force the rich merchants, 
mercers, and goldsmiths, to supply them gratis with 
silks, jewelry, and rich food. Their grand state does 
not last long, however, for they are soon besieged by 
the Duke of Saxony. They are then compelled to eat 
old shoes, chandlers’ and scriveners’ old wares tc 
prevent themselves from starving. Leyden, loving the 
theatrical and spectacular, sends his wife to play the 
part of Judith and save them. The rebels are finally 
captured, tortured, and executed. 


The satire succeeds well in ridiculing a blind and 
unorganized artisan uprising, the love of the rebels for 
perpetuating their names; their boasting of high 


°* Pages 17 and 18. 

96 Wodden hole, i.e., wooden hole, the stocks. 

*? This was a characteristic of many artisans also who were 
not anarchists; e. g., Gresham in Heywood’s If You Know Not: 
me, You Know Nobody, Part 2, written in the same year as 
Hells Broke Loose, 1605. 

Vanity of Vanities, 1659; and The Lamentations of a Bad 
Market, 1660, are ballads that satirize John Leyden. 


140 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


lineage; their comparing themselves with kings (it is 
brought out in the rebels’ clamors that Tamburlaine, 
though at first only a shepherd, became king) ; and 
their love of the theatrical and spectacular. 


A play somewhat late for our study is interesting 
partly because of its own merits and partly because of 
its reflection on contemporary politics. Tatham’s The 
Rump, 1660,°* represents apprentices as rowdies who 
claim considerable rights in the government. They 
threaten dire revenge on Hewson, a one-eyed shoe- 
maker who had risen to rank under Cromwell, and 
demand a free parliament. Their derision of Hewson, 
whom they pelt with turnips, is expressed as follows: 


FIRS?. He has spun a fine thread to-day. 

SECOND. It may bring him to his end. 

FIRST. St. Hugh’s bones must go to the rack and there let him 
take his last, — Whoop, Cobler!**® 


In the fifth act*”° apprentices, whooping as usual, 
enter with faggots on their shoulders and rumps of 
mutton on spits. “Roast the rump” is their cry: they 
are about to make a public ceremony that represents 
the destruction of the Rump Parliament. On wood 
which is painted like a pile of faggots they turn and 
roast a rump of mutton, carousing and drinking in the 
meantime.*°? 

The play ends in a victory for the Royalists, and 
disparagement of Mrs. Cromwell and Hewson. The 


** J. Maidment and W. H. Logan edition of 1879. 
Ta CL) A Clon. 
40° Act 5, p. 269. 


*°s According to Pepys’ Diary, vol. 1, page 24, rumps of 
mutton were actually burned at this time by butchers in the 
Strand. 


SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 141 


discomfited Hewson is represented as speaking the 
following words: 


Have you any old boots or shoes to mend? I have helpt to 
underlay the Government this twenty years, and have been upon 
the mending hand, but I fear now I shall be brought to my last, 
and therefore ought to mind my end.*°’ 


Although artisans liked to imitate the courtly classes 
and to intermarry with the nobility, the two classes 
hated one another. The rivalry between gallants and 
artisans is a favorite theme with the writers on city 
life; e.g., Middleton in his Michaelmas Term. The 
gentry had from early times scorned craftsmen and 
traders, had used the terms, ‘“‘tailor,” ‘cobbler,’ “col- 
lier,” “base cogging merchant,” etc., as synonyms of 
disgust, although they depended on these substantial 
workers for their existence. The craftsmen, in turn, 
swindled the gallants, and resorted to usury whenever 
such practices were possible. Several plays represent 
well the hatred between the self-made man and the 
man of high blood. In Arden of Feversham, 1592, 
Mosbie, the despised tailor, kills the rich Arden with 
the pressing iron that Arden had belittled as the stamp 
of the tailor’s craft. In Histriomastix, 1599, the de- 
pendence of the higher classes on tradesmen is stressed. 
Massinger’s New Way to Pay Old Debts, 1632, is one 
of the best works to show the growing hatred between 
the two classes. 

+o? Act 5, p. 276. Note the frequency of terms like “mend,” 
“end,” and “last,” which are technicalities of the shoemakers’ 
alate that satirize Hewson are A Hymn to the Gentle Craft, 
1659; The Gang, 1659; and The Traitor’s Downfall, 1660. 

1°8 Plays that represent to a certain extent this mutual hatred 


and relation between the gentry and the artisan class are Shirley 
and Chapman’s The Ball, 1632, and Shirley’s Gamester, 1637. 


142 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


One result of the Puritan Revolution was the eleva- 
tion of people of low rank to positions of eminence. 
Cromwell, a brewer’s son, advanced himself and others. 

He soon forsook the Dray and Sling, and 
Counted a Brew-house a petty thing, 
Unto the. stately Throne of a King... 
It far surpast a Tun.*°* 
As his wife says of him, “he could give titles of honor 
to the meanest peasants — made brewers, draymen, 
coblers, tinkers, or anybody, lords.”’?** Besides Crom- 
well himself, others of low rank are Woodfleet, son of 
a custard maker, one of the competitors after Crom- 
well’s death for the Protectorship; and Hewson, a one- 
eyed shoemaker, who becomes eminent in Cromwell’s 
service. The Puritan Revolution was, then, social and 
industrial as well as religious and political. 

With the advent. of the Cavaliers, ridicule of the 
craftsmen and Puritans increased. The Puritans were 
usually of the middle class, and often represented some 
trade. Something may be said, before closing this 
chapter, of the attitude of dramatists toward Puri- 
tans.?°° Actors and dramatists naturally hated Puri- 
tans and ridiculed them at every opportunity, because 
these sought the suppression of plays. As early as 
1601, Sir Toby Belch, in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, 
says to the austere steward, Malvolio: 


Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no 


more cakes and ale??*’ 


*°* From the ballad, The Traitor’s Downfall, Roxburghe Bal- 
lad Socy., vol. 7, p. 660. 

Another ballad that satirizes Cromwell and his family is Joan’s 
Ale was new. 

195 The Rump, Act 5, se. 1. 

1°86 This study will, of course, be restricted to the Puritans 
who represent trades. 

das Wo ter tallest 


SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 143 


The others express their disgust at Malvolio’s inter- 
ference with their revelry, several of them calling him 
a Puritan. In a number of plays Puritans are intro- 
duced as victims of satire. Thus, Chapman’s An Hu- 
morous Day’s Mirth, 1599, pictures Florila, a Puritan 
wife of an old husband. The Puritan, published in 
1607,?° is a satire on the middle class, and on Puritans. 
In Thomas Killigrew’s Parson’s Wedding, 1640, Crop, 
a secrivener and Brownist,'°® is a figure that receives 
attention. 

In Mayne’s City Match, c. 1639, and in Middleton’s 
Family of Love, printed in 1608, are more intimate 
associations of Puritans with crafts. In the former, a 
sempstress is spoken of as being’ a Puritan at her 
needle; i. e., she sews religious designs in petticoats, 
as was the custom of Puritans then." In The Family 
of Love, Puritan extremists are satirized, especially in 
the person of an apothecary’s wife. 

The most interesting feature of Puritans in this 
study is in their stubborn opposition to plays or fairs. 
Several amusing characters of this type are Hob, in 
Fletcher’s Women Pleased; Oliver, in Middleton’s 
Mayor of Queenborough; and Busy, in Jonson’s Bar- 
tholomew Fair. 

In The Mayor of Queenborough, 1596, Simon, a tan- 
ner, and Oliver, a Puritan and fustian-weaver, are 
candidates for the mayoralty. Oliver was also twice 
ale-conner; i.e., an officer who keeps account of ale. 

198 Tt has the initials, ‘“W. S.”, and was hence erroneously 


thought to be by Shakespeare. The play is in C. F. T. Brooke’s 
Shakespeare Apocrypha. 


10° Brownism was a theory of church government named after 
the sixteenth century Puritan, Robert Browne, who introduced it. 


REOLLet 2..8C. 2s 


144 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


Simon is chosen mayor, to the chagrin of Oliver. The 
latter, a so-called Puritan rebel, is captured and ridi- 
culed by his captors in their presentation of a play. 


ule STANely Wale RT Ie Meahalet eats the only way 


To execute a Puritan, is seeing of a play.**' 


The Puritans themselves, however, were frequentlv 
engaged in these very crafts that catered to vanity, and 
this fact furnishes the theme for an excellent satire on 
Puritans; i.e., Thomas Randolph’s Muse’s Looking- 
Glass, 1638.112. The scene is in the neighborhood of 
Black-Fryars, which was noted for Puritans and 
feathermakers and for a combination of both. There 
are two Puritans: Bird, a featherman, with feathers 
for the play-house; and Mrs. Flowerdew, wife to ua 
haberdasher of small wares, with pins and looking- 
glasses. Talking of the corruption of the times, they 
criticize the play before they see it. Bird, who has a 
somewhat guilty conscience in spite of his prudery, 
says that such performances often ridicule persons 
who try to sell false wares. They scold Roscius, the 
player, because of his vain profession; but he, in turn, 
points out that both of them have crafts that wait on 
vanity: pins for laces, ruffs, etc., and feathers which 
give wing to pride. 

These Puritans are finally persuaded to see the play, 
which is called The Muse’s Looking-Glass. Afraid of 
being corrupted by even looking at it, they criticize it 
throughout the whole performance. Roscius says that 
this performance cures beholders of sin and ignorance, 
a statement which reconciles the Puritans to an extent. 


"i Ce DytBC he 
**2 Dodsley’s Old English Plays, vol. 9. 


SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 145 


Neither in this chapter nor in the preceding ones 
have all the works introducing artisans been men- 
tioned. In many works these characters are so poorly 
delineated that little would be gained by discussing 
them. The repetitious feature of many works is also 
obvious: the heroic apprentice is a theme treated in 
many works in prose, verse (including ballad), and 
drama; cheating of craftsmen is treated also in these 
different forms of literature. Some miscellaneous 
works, though not mentioned as yet, are of some gen- 
eral interest. There are humorous domestic ballads 
that hardly contribute anything directly to this study, 
but that are of some interest to the general reader. 
One of the most interesting of domestic ballads touch- 
ing on crafts is The Industrious Smith.1% This poem 
is very vivid in its description of an alehouse. It tells 
of a smith who becomes poor and asks his wife to help 
him by selling ale. She consenting, they get a girl, 
Besse, to welcome the guests. Very noisy customers 
frequent the place thereafter; these flirt with the 
smith’s wife and maid, and refuse to pay their bills. 
The wife answers the smith’s remonstrance in every 
case by the following words which form the humorous 
refrain of the ballad: 


These things must be if we sell ale. 


Other ballads dealing with drunkenness are The Jovial 
Tinker, The Drunken Butcher of Tideswell, and Half 
a dozen good Wives. The Cooper of Norfolke, The 


**8 Roxburghe Ballads, vol. 2, p. 94. 

Romantic rather than realistic ballads are The Merry Pranks 
of Robin Goodfellow, The Devonshire Nymph, True Love Exalted, 
and Deloney’s Patient Grissel. 


146 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


Cobbler of Colchester, and The Pinnyng of the Basket 
are equally interesting. 

Certain late ballads in D’Urfey’s Pills to Purge Mel- 
ancholy describe craftsmen in detail, often introduc- 
ing vulgar or obscene associations with work or tools. 
Satirical and unpleasant works not restricted to crafts 
are certain versified portrayals of social climbers, their 
intermarriages with those of higher rank, and the 
consequent degradation of society. Instances are 
Cornu-copiae, Pasquils Nightcap,’“* printed in 1612; 
and Pasquils Palinodia, 1619.1 Ballads with some- 
what similar themes are The Jolly Miller, The London 
Prentice, The Country Wake, and The Lamentation of 
an ale Wifes Daughter. 

Interesting prose works that introduce craftsmen 
among other individuals and that contain much satire 
and punning on the technical terms of the craft are 
the Character books. They repeat much that has 
already been given in this chapter, presenting among 
other persons citizens and artisans who defraud cus- 
tomers and who aspire to nobility. Elizabethan imita- 
tions of Chaucer’s works and some of Dekker’s poems, 
one on a merchant, the other on an artificer, in his 
Papist Encountred, 1606, show an approximation to 
this type. Some instances in prose are John Stephen’s 
E'ssayes and Characters, 1615, in which are delineated 
among others a tapster and a tailor’s man; John Tay- 
lor’s An Armado, 1627, in which the state of appren- 
ticeship is gently satirized, his A Bawd, 1635 (partly 

44 Grosart’s Occasional Issues, vol. 5. 

15 Grosart’s Occasional Issues, vol. 5. 

18 Collections of these works are J. O. Halliwell’s Books of 


Characters and H. Morley’s Character Writings of the 17th 
Century. 


SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 147 


verse), in which four of the greatest livery companies, 
the mercers, grocers, fishmongers, and goldsmiths are 
subjected to uncomplimentary comparisons; Don Lup- 
ton’s London and the Country Carbonadoed and Quar- 
tered into severall Characters, 1632, which stresses the 
courtesy of alewives and the dishonesty of goldsmiths; 
Whimzies, 1631, in which painters, peddlers, news- 
paper writers, launderers, almanac-makers, and ex- 
change-men are held up to ridicule, attention being 
given to the psychology of advertising; Sir Thomas 
Overbury’s Characters, 1614, in whicha tailor, a tinker, 
an almanac-maker, a quack-salver, and a French cook 
are described; Nicholas Breton’s Good and Bad, 1616, 
in which are contrasted a good and a bad merchant; 
John Earle’s Micro-Cosmographie, 1628, in which are 
described bakers, cooks, shopkeepers, citizens, and 
aldermen. The Wandering Jew telling Fortunes to 
Englishmen, 1649, is a rather unique work that 
presents among others a cobbler, an alderman’s super- 
cilious son, a citizen’s fashion-loving wife and an 
apprentice, the youngest son of a gentleman, all de- 
sirous of knowing their fortune, as are the patronizers 
of Alice West. In this work the various eccentricities 


and desires of the inquirers are exposed. 


\ 





CONCLUSION 


Twentieth century readers, as well as students of 
the Middle Ages and Elizabethan period, may be in- 
terested in the preceding study of the medieval and 
Elizabethan craftsman in literature. 

Modern writers, such as Carlyle, Ruskin, Morris, 
Whittier, Longfellow, Rolland, Hauptmann, Ibsen, 
D’Annunzio, and Guiterman revert at times to the 
master-craftsman and his artistry, or to the medieval 
guild system, with its original emphasis on co-opera- 
tion, brotherhood, and equality. 

Persistence even to the present day of a theory 
somewhat like that of the guild may be seen in the 
fact that the place formetly occupied by the latter is 
now occupied, to a certain extent, by the Trade Unions, 
the Mechanics’ Association of American cities, the 
Masonic Order, and Guild Socialism. 

Medieval and Elizabethan apprenticeship, though not 
at any time a perfect system, was a far better method 
of education for young persons than many of the later 
forms; e. g., the rigid factory system of the 18th and 
19th centuries. 

To the modern reader one of the most interesting 
aspects of this study is found in the treatment of the 
self-made man, whose rise to prominence presents a 
few parallels to the typical self-made man of more 
recent date. Although the stories of Whittington, Eyre, 
and Thornton are apparently exaggerated accounts of 
the fulfillment of seemingly idle dreams, such narra- 

149 


150 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 


tives are possible. What could be more illustrative po- 
etically of the speculating and commercial Elizabethan 
age than Whittington’s dream and its fulfillment as 
described in the ballad? What, moreover, could be more 
illustrative of the great age of inventions, the 19th and 
20th centuries? How could we have the five and ten 
cent store, the cheap automobile, or the aeroplane, were 
it not for such dreamers as the Woolworths, Henry 
Ford, Langley, and the Wright brothers? The story 
of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp and that of Oid 
Fortunatus, with all their wealth of romance and 
oriental splendor, are not more interesting, and are far 
less significant than the story of Sir Richard Whitting- 
ton, who, according to popular tradition, through the 
original venture of a cat, became a great speculator, 
philanthropist, and mayor, celebrated in prose, ballad, 
drama and pageant. 


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— Praise of Hempseed. In Spenser Socy., vols. 2-4. 

— Praise of the Needle. In Spenser Socy., vol. 7. 

— Superbie Flagellum. In Spenser Socy., vols. 2-4. 

—A Tale in a Tub. In Spenser Socy., vol. 7. 

-—— Travels of Twelve-Pence. In Spenser Socy., vols. 2-4. 


— The True Cause of the Watermen’s Suit concerning Players. 
In Spenser Socy., vols. 2-4. 


—The Whole Life and Progresse of Henry Walker the Iron- 
monger. In Spenser Socy., vol. 7. 


— The World runnes on Wheels. In Spenser Socy., vols. 2-4. 

Taylor’s Pastorall. In Spenser Socy., vols. 2-4. 

Thomas Lord Cromwell, 1602. Ed. by A. F. Hopkinson. London, 
1899. 


The Tinker of Turvey, 1600 c. Ed. by J. O. Halliwell. London, 
1859. 

Tom Tyler and his Wife. In J. S. Farmer’s Six Anonymous 
Plays. 


The Traitor’s Downfall, 1660. In Roxburghe Ballad Socy., vol. 
7, p. 660. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 163 


Upaut, N. Ralph Roister Doister, 1553 ¢. Edited by W. H. 
Williams and P. A. Robin. London, 1911. 

A Warning for Fair Women, 1599. In R. Simpson’s School of 
Shakespeare, vol. 2. 

The Weakest Goeth to the Wall, 1600. Amersham, England. 
Issued for subscribers by J. S. Farmer, 1913. 

Westward for Smelts, 1608 c. In Percy Socy., vol. 21. 

Witson, R. The Pedler’s Prophecy. Amersham, England. Is- 
sued for subscribers by J. S. Farmer, 1918. 

The Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll, 1600. In vol. 3 of A. H. Bullen’s 
Old Plays. 4 vols. Library of Congress, 1882. 

WITHER, G. Haleluiah, 1641. Hymns 42, 53, and 54. In Spenser 
socy., vol. 27. 

The Woeful Lamentation of Jane Shore, a Goldsmith’s Wife in 
London, sometime King Edward the Fourths Concubine. 2 
parts. In Philips’ Old Ballads, vol. 1, p. 145. 





INDEX 


Aladdin and the Wonderful 
Lamp, 150. 


Alchemist, The, 100n. 


An arte whose end was never 
known, 74-75. 


Anatomy of Abuses, 10, 91, 
103. 


Antony and Cleopatra, 125. 
arene for a Quiet Life, 83, 


apprentices, 2-7; changing 
treatment of them in liter- 
ature, 115-121; dress of, 5, 
6; girls as apprentices, 9, 
10; apprentices in litera- 
ture, 6, 7, 115-121. Statute 
eae D, 20, 

apprenticeship, 2-7. 

Arden of Feversham, 141. 


Autolycus, 84. 


barbers in literature, 91, 97, 


Barnaby Bunch, 72. 

Barry, L., 70n. 

Bartholomew Fair, 80, 148. 

Beaumont and Fletcher, 12, 21, 
22n., 23, 46, 122, 1238,. 126. 

Besant, Sir W., 7. 

blacksmiths, 68, 69, 145. 


Bloody Murder of Sir John 
Barleycorn, The, 58. 


Bonaventura, St., 79n. 
Breton, N., 147. 
Brewer, A., 20, 21, 31, 69. 


Brodsky, R., 4. 

Brome, R., 120, 121. 
Brooke, C. F. T., 148n. 
Brownism, 148n. 

Bullen, A. H., 79n. 
Bulwer-Lytton, 132n., 187n. 
Byrsa Basilica, 36. 


Cade, J., 128, 129. 
Carlyle, T., 149. 
Cartwright, W., 
126. 
Character books and works of 
kindred nature, 146, 147. 
Character writings of the 17th 
century, 146n. 
Chaste Maid in Cheapside, A, 
101. 


Chaucer, G., delineation of ar- 
tisans, 11, 85n., 103. 


Chaucer, G., Wife of Bath, 11, 
108, 103n. 

Chaucer’s Burgesses, 11n. 

Chronicles, 28. 

Chute, A., 75n. 

City Madam, The, 113, 114, 
119. 

City Match, The, 100n., 118, 
143. 

Clem, drawer, 70-72. 

Clode, C. M., 3, 4. 

clothiers in literature, 28, 29, 
63, 1038, 104. 


100n., 125, 


165 


166 


Cobler of Canterbury, The, 86, 


86n. 
Cobler of Colchester, The, 146. 
Collier, J. P., 82n., 83. 
colliers in plays, 69, 70. 
BOs and speculation, 24- 


Contention, The, 128, 129. 

co-operation among artisans, 
eet 35, 44, 51-60, 62, 66, 

cooks in literature, 77, 78. 

Cooke, J., 118. 

Coriolanus, 135-137. 

Coy Cook Maid, The, 19. 

craftsmen as communists and 
as religious fanatics, 137- 
140; as founders of. insti- 
tutions, 34, 36-40; as mem- 
bers of a mob, 129-141; as 
soldiers, 13-23, 46, 122- 
129; their interest in dra- 
matic productions, 41-45, 
121-125. 

Crispin and Crispianus, 19n. 

Crispin, St., 20. 

Crispinus and Crispianus, 14, 
15, 60-63. 

Cromwell, O., 140-142. 


Damon and Pithias, 69. 

D’Annunzio, G., 149. 

daughter of the craftsman, 9, 
105-107, 113, 114. 

Debate between Pride and Low- 
liness, by F. T., 86n. 
Defence of Connycatching, 98. 
Dekker, T., 12, 24, 25, 34, 35, 

43, 44, 45, 54-59, 64-67, 72, 
79n., 91-98, 104n., 105, 146. 
Deloney, T., 12-16, 25-34, 51, 
52, 58, 53n., 63, 103, 104. 
Deloney’s influence on litera- 


INDEX 


ee dealing with crafts, 
Dodsley, R., Z1n., 118n., 127n., 
144n. 


Doubtful Heir, The, 135n. 

Drake, Sir F., 42, 48. 

drawers in literature, 70-72. 

Drayton, M., 75-77, 109n. 

matte M., and Munday, A., 
n. 


Dunlop, O. J., and Denman, R. 
D., 1; Sn300m 

D’Urfey, T., 68n., 128n. 

Dutch Courtesan, The, 97, 98. 


Eastward Hoe, 90n., 105-107, 
116, 119, 123n. 

Edward IV, 49n., 108-111. 

een IV to Jane Shore, 75- 


Edwards, R., 69. _ 
Elizabethan ballads, 12n. 


Elizabethan imitations of 
Chaucer’s Canterbury 
Tales, 86. 


English Apprenticeship and 
Child Labor, 1, 8n., 5n. 

English Pageantry, 41n., 42n. 

Englishmen for My Money, 638. 

Evans, T., 18n., 130n. 

Everyman out of His Humour, 
128n. 

Eyre, S., 30-35, 54-59, 105, 149. 


Faerie Queene, 51. 

Fair Maid of the Exchange, 
The, 74. 

Fair Maid of the West, The, 
70-72. 

Fairholt, F. W., 41n. 

Falstaff, Sir John, 102. 

Field, N., 109n. 


INDEX 


Brecher, J. 12, 21, 22n., 23; 
46, 67, 77, 78, 122, 128, 126, 
143. 


Ford, H., 150. 
Ford, J., 127, 128. 
Four Prentices of London, The, 


1, 


Fulwel, U., 69. 


Gamester, The, 141n. 

Gang, The, 141n. 

Gascoigne, G., 85. 

Gentle Craft, the, 13-16, 20, 26, 
29-85, 52, 58, 53n., 63, 66. 

George a Greene, 14. 

George Barnwell, ballad, 117. 

George Mannington, ballad on, 
117, 118. 

Gilds and Companies of Lon- 
don, 1-12. 

Glapthorne, 114n. 

Good News and Bad News, 
107n. 

Greene, R., 86-91, 93. 

Gresham, T., 27n., 36, 37. 

Grim the Collier of Croyden, 
69. 


Grosart, A. B., 98n. 
Guild Socialism, 149. 
Gummere, F., 12n. 


Hall, E., 75n. 

Halliwell, J. O., 15n., 146n. 

Harleian Miscellany, 16n. 

Haughton, W., 63; with Dekker 
and Chettle, 66, 67; with 
Hathway and Smith, 638. 

Hauptmann, G., 149. 

Hawkwood, Sir J., 17, 18, 48. 

Hazlitt, W. C., 1, 2. 

Hells Broke Loose, 187-140. 


167 
Henry IV, 61n., 101, 102, 106, 
106n. 


Henry V, 20. 

Henry VI, 128, 129. 

Henry VIII, 181. 

Heywood, T., 20-22, 27n., 36, 
37, 42n., 70-72, 74, 108-111, 
118n., 139n. 

Hindley, C., 80n. 

GN of the Cries of London, 

n. 


Hobson, 86. 

Honest Whore, The, 67. 

aren of a London Prentice, 

é, 

Honoria and Mammon, 46. 

Hyde Park, 114, 115. 

Hymn to the Gentle Craft, A, 
141n. 


Ibsen, H., 149. 

If it be not Good, the Devil is 
in it, 67. 

If You Know Not Me You 
Know Nobody, 27n., 36, 
37, 139n. 

Ili May-Day, ballad, 130. 

Industrial Organization in the 
pt and 17th Centuries, 

n. 

Industrious Smith, The, 145. 

hangin! Nees 138, 14, 26- 

Jack Straw, Life and Death of, 
20, 127. 

Jahrbuch der Deutschen 
Shakespeare Gesellschaft, 
36n. 

Jamieson, 538n. 

Jane Shore, 75-77, 108-113. 

jest-books, 85, 86. 

Johnson, R., 16-18, 25. 

Jonson, B., 77, 78, 80, 90n., 


168 


95n., 100, 100n., 101n., 105- 
107, (116,219 1225 123n5 
148. 
journeymen, 7, 8; in plays, 53- 
63; the masterpiece, 7, 8. 
Julius Caesar, 66, 132, 135. 


King and the Miller of Mans- 
field, The, 48, 49. 


King Edward IV and the Tan- 
ner of Tamworth, 49, 50. 

King James I and the Tinker, 
47, 48. 

King John, 126. 

Kittredge, G. L., 103n. 

Knave in Grain, A, 98. 

Knight of the Burning Pestle, 
The, 22n., 46, 122, 123. 

Kuhl, E. P., 11n. 


Lamentable Fall of Queen 
Elnor, The, 99, 99n. 


Langley, S. P., 150. 

Lawrence,, W. W., 103n. 

Like Will to Like, 69. 

Lipson, E., 7n. 

Livery Companies of London, 

Locrine, 19. 

London Chanticleers, The, 81. 

London Lickpeny, 80. 

London’s Tempe, 43-45. 

Long Meg, 19. 

Longbeard, W., 137. 

Longfellow, H. W., 149. 

Lord Mayor’s Show, The, 41- 
45, 128, 124. 

Love-Sick King, The, 20, 21, 
37, 38, 69. 

Lydgate, J., 80. 


Maid in the Mill, The, 67, 68. 


INDEX 


Malone Society Reprints, 126n. 
Mantell, R. B., 1338n. 
Marmion, §S., 97. 


Marston, J., 90n., 97, 98, 105- 
107, 118;°123r: 


Masonic Order, The, 149. 
Massinger, P., 10n., 77, 88n., 
113, 114, 218: 


master-craftsman, the, 3, 4, 8, 
9 


Match Me in London, 64-66. 
Mayne, J., 100n., 126, 1438. 
Mayor of Queenborough, The, 


37, 143 
Measure for Measure, 70n. 
Merchant cf Venice, The, 35. 
merchant-tailors, 3n., 24, 25. 


Merry Ballad of the Miller and 
Ske Henry the Second, A, 


Michaelmas Term, 94-97. 

Micro-Cosmographie, 147. 

Middleton, T., 36, 37, 54, 67, 
94-97, 98, 109n., 141, 143. 


Midsummer Nights Dream, 
184 BU BP. 


pie in his best array, The, 
48. 


Miller of Mansfield, The, 48. 

millers in literature, 48, 67, 68. 

Mirror for Magistrates, T5n. 

Mock-Majesty, 137. 

modern parallels to guilds, 149. 

Monuments of Honor, The, 17. 

Morley, H., 146n. 

Morris, W., 149. 

Muse’s Looking Glass, The, 
144, 


Nabbes, T., 70n., 77, 100. 
Nash, T., 92, 187. 
Needle, Praise of the, 738. 


INDEX 


New Academy, The, 120, 121. 
New Inn, The, 101n. 


New Shakespeare Society, 9in., 
92n. 


New Way to Pay Old Debts, A, 
77. 


New Wonder, A, 36. 


Niue Worthies of London, The, 
16-18, 25. 


Old Ballads, 18n., 130n. 
Oliphant, T., 82. 


Parker, M., 59n. 

Pasquils Palinodia, 109n., 146. 
Patient Grissel, 66, 67. 
Pedlar’s Lamentation, The, 82. 
Peele, G., 42, 99n. 

Pepys, S., 140n. 


Percy Society, 19n., 47n., 69n., 
83n., 117n. 

Perkin Warbeck, 127, 128. 

Fhilips, A., 111n. 

Pieces of Ancient Popular Po- 
etry, 49n. 

Pills to Purge Melancholy, 68n., 
128n. 

Pimlyco, 75n. - 

Popular Ballads, 53n. 

Porta Pietatis, 42n. 

Privy Council, Acts of the, 1, 
6n. 

Puritan Revolution, 142. 


Quickly, Mistress, 101, 102. 
Quip for an Upstart Courtier, 


Ralph Roister Doister, 79, 8U. 
Randolph, T., 144. 

Rawlins, T., 20, 22, 68, 67. 
Rebellion, The, 20, 22, 63, 67. 


169 


Renegado, The, 88n. 
Rich, B., 91, 94. 
Richard [, 131, 182. 


Richard III, several plays on, 
75n. Shakespeare’s play, 
130. 


Ritson, J., 49n. 

Roaring Girl, The, 67. 

Robin Goodfellow, 47. 

Rolland, R., 149. 

Romeo and Juliet, 181. 

Rowe, N., 75n. 

Rowlands, S., 107n., 137-140. 

Rowley, W., 19, 20, 36, 54, 59- 
63, 67, 68, 105. 


Roxburghe Ballads, 19n., 82n., 
145n. 


Roxburghe Ballad Society, 
19n. 72n., 73n., 82n. 


Royal Exchange, the, 36, 37. 
Rump, The, 140, 141, 142n. 
Ruskin, J., 149. 


self-made man, the, 25-40. 
Shakespeare Apocrypha, 148n. 


Shakespeare Society, 37n., 86n., 
29n. 


Shakespearean Mob, The, 137n. 
Shakespeare’s plays, 20, 35, 
61n., 66, 69, 84, 121, 122, 
126, 128-131, 135-137. 
Shipbuilders, The, 45n. 
Shirburn Ballads, 48n., 75n. 
Shirley, J., 46, 114, 115, 116, 
123, 135n., 141n. 
Shirley and Chapman, 141n. 
Shoare, The Book of, 75n. 
Shoemaker a Gentleman, A, 15, 
54, 59-638, 105. 
Shoemakers, The, 44n. 
shoemakers’ guild, the, 13-16, 
19, 20, 29-35, 54-68. 


170 


Shoemakers’ Holiday, The, 33- 
35, 54-59, 105. 

Siv John Oldcastle, 45n. 

Sir Thomas More, 129, 130. 

Six ae AR of the West, The, 


Six Yeomen of the West, The, 
63 


Ce 


social and industrial aspects of 
the Puritan Revolution, 
142-144. 


Spenser, E., 51. 

Spenser Society, 94n. 
Staple of News, The, 77, 78. 
Stow, J., 37n. 

Strange Horse Race, A, 93. 
Strype, J., 4n. 

Stubbes, P., 10, 91, 103. 


tailors in literature, 72-74. 

Tatham, J., 140, 141, 142n. 

Taylor, J., 73, 94. 

Thomas Lord Cromwell, 36, 
68, 69. 

Thomas of Reading, 28, 29, 52, 
63, 103, 104. 

Thornton, 31, 37-40, 149. 

Etre Merry Cobblers, The, 

n. 


Tom Dough, 63. 

trade songs, 80-85. 

Trade Union, the, 149. 
Traitors Downfall, The, 141n. 


INDEX 


Tupper, F., 137n. 
twelve great livery companies, 


’ 


Unwin, G., 8n. 


Upon my Lord Mayor’s Day 
being put off, 124. 


Walworth, W., 17, 20, 43. 

Warning des Fair Women, A, 

Weakest Goeth to the Wall, 
The, 72. 

Webster, J., 17. . 

Westward for Smelts, 86. 

What You Will, 106n. 

Whittier, J. G., 44n., 45n. 

Whittington, Sir R., 38-40, 149, 
150. 

wife of the craftsman, the, 9, 
10, 102-115; her skili as a 
worker, 10, 103; her dress, 
10, 104-108. 

Winter’s Tale, The, 84. 

Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll, 
The, 78, 79. 

Withington, R., 41n., 42n. 

Wonderful Year, The, 24, 25. 

Woodstock, 127. 

Woolworths, the, 150. 

work songs, 51-58, 67, 68, 79, 
80. 

Wright brothers, the, 150. 





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